


Stormborn

by HighestandCo



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Horror, Mystery, Slow Burn, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 06:53:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 39,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15746547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HighestandCo/pseuds/HighestandCo
Summary: The night elf druid Ero'then and his students chase a band of blood elven pilgrims into the Netherstorm. When their Shan'do begins to suffer nightmares that leave him screaming in the night, the night elves begin to doubt his sanity. But when both they and the blood elves reach their goal all discover a dark secret far worse than any dream.





	1. Chapter 1

_Ero’then ran through the woods, breath heavy, whistling and bounding through the brush. His feet slapped the virgin undergrowth he was so used to and it was a simple matter to avoid slips and collisions that would have plagued any adult kaldorei - even his parents - who might have pursued him._

_But today he was not the pursued, but the pursuer. Ero’then kept his gaze ahead, whipping around trees and dancing through the brush. He kept his eyes ahead on the still-rustling brush his quarry left behind._

_Still, she was too quick. Soon the brush she was blowing through would cease its swaying before he could catch it._

_“You run like a wild boar!” he yelled._

_Ahead, a high giggle alerted him to her location. He took a sharp turn into a denser portion of wood, trying to twist through it and cut her off. Though exhausted, he pushed himself to a full sprint. Brambles and thorns tore at his face._

_Then he came out of the thicket and saw her and she him. She screamed in surprise. He tried to find his footing, but he had come out at a small rise, and his feet pounded thin air for a moment before he tumbled down it, rolling through the dewy ferns._

_“Highborne ass!” he swore, scrambling to get on his feet. He finally got back up and flung himself forward—right into her._

_“Ero—” she started, just before they collided Their heads struck each other with a sickening crack and she snapped back from him with a gasp._

_Light danced before him. He tried to catch her, but he lost his balance again and tumbled down the hill with her. They crashed through undergrowth and drenched themselves with dew. The world was a blur of sky, whirling plants and earth._

_Finally, they rolled to a stop._

_The canopy stretched above Ero’then, tittering quietly with the sound of soft rain. The storm hid the stars but lights still danced in the sky. He wasn’t sure if that was the blow’s effect or the storm’s lightning. He shook his head. A sudden wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm him._

_“Anora?” he groaned, trying to force himself to his elbows. “Anora, are you all right?”_

_Rain began to fall. He realized she was crying softly._

_“Anora!” Though swaying a bit, he scrambled to his feet. She was just a pace away and he crawled to her through the growth._

_She covered her face when he came close. “No,” she sniffled, trying to push him away. “Don’t look.”_

_He pushed her arm aside and forced her to lie down. “Let me see your face,” he told her, his heart in his throat. “Let me…”_

_Reluctantly, she let him withdraw her hand, and when he did, Ero’then had to a gasp. The cartilage of her nose was splattered across her cheeks. Her whole face was bloody, with fresh streams running out her nose like mucus in the height of fever. Her eyes were wide with soft amber twisting around her irises._

_“You cheated,” she said, and he wasn’t sure if she was mock-pouting or actually on the verge of crying again. “It’s bad, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I thought you were hurt.”_

_“It’s my fault…” he muttered, half-listening. By Elune, the wound was bad. How would they explain this to the elders?_

_The woods were forbidden to them. Weeks ago, the elders had said it was dangerous, even though once both he and Anora had been free to roam to their hearts’ content. The elders wouldn’t tell them why the woods had been banned so suddenly, or why it had been banned at all. When he and Anora had asked their respective parents, they had kept their silence in respect as well._

_Despite the ban, both he and Anora couldn’t resist a nighttime game of chase. They’d grown up in these woods and they’d never stumbled on anything more dangerous than a saber cat. They’d never gotten hurt._

_Well, not until now._

_He tried to keep his panic from breaking through. Anora watched him and he watched her bleed onto the forest floor._

_He must have been unsuccessful because Anora said quietly, “It’s all right. We’ll just say we were having a game and we ran into each other. It was an accident. We don’t have to tell them we were in the woods.”_

_They wouldn’t_ have _to tell them, Ero’then knew. There was only one reason the two of them would get up in the midst of the night, when the rest of the village was asleep. Anora wouldn’t have broken her nose while sleeping. Once they saw her, they wouldn’t let her out of her home for weeks as punishment, if they were lucky. All thanks to his competitiveness._

_So he said, “Sit back.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Just sit back,” he told her. He laid her carefully on her back and shuffled through the leaves over to her head. “This won’t hurt.” At least, he didn’t think it would._

_He took a deep breath and closed his eyes._

_Anora watched bemused and with growing curiosity as he swayed slightly on his knees. He opened his eyes, now a bit misty, and bent over her face. Anora resisted the urge to pull back as his breath tickled her._

_He worked carefully, not exactly sure what he was doing. She lay very still, blood starting to pool in the valley between her neck and her collarbone. A soft glow began to make itself apparent, running small tendrils of light from his flitting fingers to her broken nose._

_“It itches…” she started, but then trailed off. Ero’then closed his eyes again. He could feel the dew and sweat mingling on his face, and he realized he was starting to breathe with labor._

_He ended with finishing touches, then exhaled deeply and fell back on his elbows. He rubbed his eyes, a wave of exhaustion overpowering him._

_Anora sat up and felt her nose, now totally whole but for some dried blood. “You… healed it,” she whispered, in a bit of awe. “How did you…”_

_A rush of triumph exhilarated Ero’then. He grinned and opened his eyes, ready to brag and allude mysteriously to his gift, which he had never shown anyone before, and which he had never tried on anyone but himself until now._

_But when he looked again, his words froze in his throat. Anora looked at him uncomprehendingly. But he wasn’t looking at her._

_Just above her hung a canine mouth, big enough to fit five Anora’s with room to spare. Jagged, scale-like fur jutted from its lips and beyond throughout the beast’s blood-crusted hide. It towered over Anora, tall as a building, coal-black saliva building around the edges of its mouth._

_Its tiny eyes, bright with lust, were fixed on him. Dozens of ropey lengths of skin unhurriedly detached themselves from its hide and began to dance towards him. They were like snakes slithering through the air—but instead of snake heads each had a single, cup-like mouth, all of which opened wide as they suddenly darted for his face._

_Ero’then screamed._

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Shan’do! Shan’do, wake!”

Ero’then felt the dreams retreat. He blinked himself into awareness.

A young kaldorei was hovering over him, her eyes wide with concern. Her hands had wrung themselves white, the muscles in her neck were taut and the roofs of her breasts visible in the confines of her wool jerkin.

“Shan—”

He sat up suddenly from his bedroll, forcing her to fall back on her heels. “Sel’uen,” he grunted, then coughed violently. “What are you doing?”

“Shan’do…” He watched her hesitate, then say, “I am sorry. You have slept long.”

He nodded slowly, buying time for a response as he took in the enclosed space. He and Sel’uen were in his tent, one of the few the night elves had brought along with them for the expedition.

The expedition. What expedition? It was taking longer than usual for the last vestiges of the Dream to wear off. Anxiety ran thick beneath his skin.

“Is it… morning?” he asked.

For some reason, Sel’uen wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I…” she stuttered over her words. Was she not capable of finishing a sentence? “I don’t know… There’s no way to tell here.”

That was what fully awoke all of his centuries-honed senses. Around him the tent was snapping, blown about by a rapid and incessant wind, kept down only by the pegs rooted deeply in the earth.

The _violet_ earth, he realized, and consequently understood he had re-realized every time he had woken in this gods-forsaken place. The air was heavy like an oven, and he realized his accountramenss were soaked in sweat. He was suddenly and acutely aware of his dehydration.

Outside, the wind’s howling mimicked a dying beast.

“The goblin is seeking to backtrack from our agreement,” Sel’uen said, clutching her arm but foregoing the heavy cloak attached at her back, as if unsure whether she was freezing from the wind or baking from the heat.

He nodded curtly and tore off his vest. Sel’uen hesitated, turning away. Eyes down, she added, “He is waiting for us in the town, Shan’do.”

“Bring him to me.”

Again Sel’uen paused, glancing up. “But—”

“ _Do not_ question.” His voice cracked like a whip. The young kaldorei’s eyes shot back to the earth. “Every second we wait the quel’dorei grow farther from us. We haven’t chased them across this forsaken world to stop now, have we? _Convince_ the coward to walk the whole hundred paces.”

Even before he was finished speaking Sel’uen was stammering, “Yes Shan’do.” She bowed and fled the tent, leaving the flap undone. It flayed back and forth with her passing, as if mocking him.

Sighing, he crossed the distance and snapped shut the flap. But before he buttoned it, the heavens caught his eye.

Debris littered the sky. Huge, floating chunks of dried-up earth floated aimlessly, lost in the air like fish trapped in a bowl. Beyond those, a thick and stormy fog of twisting purple obscured whatever might have been in the sky for as far as he could see. The wind, too, was thick and it was difficult to see by land for long distances. What he _could_ see was a lumpy landscape, shaped like the interconnected stools of some diseased god.

The further he looked, the more of the landscape was hidden from him until abruptly a deeply violet-hued wall of air - darker than anything else in sight - rose. It blocked out the horizon. Within it, a violent nexus of air, energy and debris shuddered in a whirlwind tall and wide as a world tree.

He observed the titanic storm for a moment longer, then shut the flap.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

“You’re _crazy!_ ” the goblin shouted. “If you go out there, you’ll get sucked right up into the sky! That storm will tear you apart, _all_ of you,” he added, theatrically indicating to the other night elves in the tent. “Do you _want_ to die? ‘Cause _that_ is how you die: You walk into a full-blown, Intensity 9 netherstorm. Back in town it’s all hands on deck just nailing our shit to the ground. Once it hits we won’t be able to leave the buildings for days. The last time something like this came through, we lost people.” The goblin paused. It looked like he was doing sums in his head. “Mixxi, Resh, Andrea, Dr. Flertrap. We even lost our dog, Brass.” He made a fluttering gesture. “Storm just picked him up, and off he went.”

Ero’then was seated on his bedroll. His vest was to his side, discarded, and his arms were locked over his folded knees. He looked relaxed, or at least Sel’uen thought so. He certainly looked calmer than he had when she’d left him.

When she’d brought back the goblin (no small feat itself, but she’d managed to entice him with a vague remark about up-front pay), the other students had been drawn out, curious. They’d followed her and the goblin into the Shan’do’s tent. The teacher had told them to stay and given them instructions, so they had filed obediently along the edges of the tent. There wasn’t much room.

The goblin’s name was Drex. They had made his acquaintance in a place they called Area 52, a tiny workshop of a town they’d stumbled on soon after leaving the mountains. Drex had been waiting at the entrance, and had given them an enthusiastic welcome.

It had soon become apparent that he was a guide by trade, and was looking for gainful employment. He had bragged to them that no one knew the wastes as he did. The Shan’do had engaged him, and gotten it out of him that he had given directions to a group of elves (the goblin called them green-eyes) not two days ago, though they had begged off hiring him, saying they had no money. The goblin also mentioned that theses elves had called themselves pilgrims.

Seeing the Shan’do’s interest, Drex hadn’t hesitated to offer to lead the kaldorei to the elves, for the right price.

But that had been yesterday, before the storm had appeared on the horizon. They’d awoken to Area 52 in a frenzy of activity. When the Shan’do approached him again, Drex had no longer been so enthusiastic about a trip into the wastes. He had urged them to wait until the storm passed.

Sel’uen watched her Shan’do. It seemed he was not willing to wait.

“You say the storm will diminish,” Ero’then spoke. “But it has been doing just the opposite.”

Drex treated him to an exaggerated shrug. He was layered in heavy cloaks and a turban, a style that the students themselves had considered adopting to protect themselves from the harsh climate. But when their teacher made no sign of wearing anything but his thin leather piece, they had reluctantly abandoned the idea.

“Do I look like a mage?” the goblin asked him. The only green Sel’uen could see was Drex’s sharp nose jutting angrily out of the front of his turban-like headgear. “Storms come and go. We got great guys and gals watching the weather, but we ain’t prophets. We just see the storm, we gauge its intensity, we collect a little data, and we shut everything down till it’s gone. If you want to know when it’ll be gone, I’m guessing inside a week.” A glint from his eyes beneath the turban. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall, you get me?”

“Yes,” Ero’then said. “I understand.”

“Great!”

“We will be leaving momentarily and we will need you to guide us. You will be recompensed well.”

The goblin’s eyes bulged. Sel’uen had to hide her smile.

“You got shit in those ears?” he yelled. “It’s a _no deal_. It ain’t about nothing but safety, pal. I’ll _gladly_ take your money. Seriously. And I ain’t even asked what you’re gonna do to those green eyes when you catch ‘em. Your business is your business. Fine! I don’t give a shit. But I’ve got news for you, pal. They ain’t surviving this storm any more than you would. They’re in a thousand little pieces, scattered in the sky.”

“They survived,” Ero’then said.

Unable to find a response, Drex turned to the students. He had apparently decided Ero’then was beyond hope of reason.

“You hearin’ me?” he shouted at them. “You follow this nutcase into the storm, you’re done. It’ll be the ride of your life for about five whole seconds.”

When they didn’t react or respond, he threw his hands up in the air.

“I tried,” he said. “Your lives ain’t on my hands, that’s for sure. Have a grand time.” He clapped his hands together, like he was washing them. But he did steal a longing glance at the pay-chest that was sitting next to Ero’then. He shook his head and headed for the exit. “Wish we could do business,” he said.

Sel’uen glanced. Brim and Yeshaila were standing in front of the exit. Drex glared at them.

“Scram, huh?” he said. “I wish you all the luck and all that. Gods be with you.”

The night elves did not “scram.” They remained where they were. Behind the goblin, Ero’then pull himself into a standing position.

“You tell your pixies to get out of the way, or—” Drex turned and stopped.

Ero’then was tall, even for a night elf. At his full height, he was more than three Drex’s stacked high. The goblin had to crane his neck to meet his eyes. He looked around, maybe for an exit.

“If you lead us true,” the Shan’do said. “Then no harm will come to you. Lead us astray, however, and you’ll never see your town again.”

The lump at the front of the goblin’s throat bobbed up and down. He managed to glare up at the night elf with some dignity.

“You threatening me?”

“Must I?”

The goblin looked around the tent again. She could see his mind working, counting his odds. He knew who they were, but from the way he’d talked to them when they’d first arrived in town, Sel’uen had thought that he’d taken them for a bunch of pacifists (not uncommon for those who knew little about druids but rumor and legend), talking to trees and animals and such. But now, it seemed he was considering other stories he’d heard about druids. Stories that made him look twice at Ero’then.

Sel’uen almost felt bad for him.

After a long pause, the goblin evenly returned Ero’then’s gaze. “Triple my usual rate, and it’s a deal, partner!” He grinned widely, and held out a hand.


	4. Chapter 4

“Sel’uen!” came a loud call.

She glanced up from her work. Renarion was jogging over to her. “Could I help you with your tent?” he asked

She watched him head for a peg and start undoing it. “You’re kind Renarion,” she said, lowering herself back down to her own peg. “Thank you.”

It was taxing work. Sel’uen ran her finger over the seed, coaxing it to withdraw its roots. She had one hand on her tent, so that it wouldn’t fly away once its roots were gone. The wind was growing coarser and wilder by the hour. It stung her skin. She was starting to feel something like a rash on the back of her neck. She thought about donning the hooded cloak she had brought with her. Why not?

Because the Shan’do wasn’t wearing his, she reminded herself. And as he brought down his tent several yards away, he did not sway in the wind and he did not flinch. She saw it as a challenge, and knew the other students had as well. If he could take the fury of the storm, then so could they. He _had_ to be doing something. Manipulating the air around him, maybe. But how?

Frustration getting the better of her, she exhaled and closed her eyes, falling into a meditation. The wind was screaming around her, carrying with it bits of earth deader than a corrupted corpse. She did not know what she was trying to do, but she tried it anyway. Her teeth ground together.

She gave up with a gasp. Sweat that had popped from her skin cooled instantly. Renarion had picked two of her five pegs and was moving on to her third.

“Has the Shan’do seemed…” he trailed off then came back, “ _distant_ to you?”

He hadn’t appeared to have noticed her latest attempt to master their Shan’do’s lesson. She turned her attention back to her peg.

She cupped it with her hand, and tried to reach out to the earth. The roots had gone deep, and she felt how the stress of the uncertain earth and the tugging wind had made them brittle. She wondered how many more times they would work.

Going over the roots, she noted how they felt more like a clingy string than a living root. She tried to soothe them so they could untangle themselves. They did not respond to her.

“The Shan’do has much on his mind,” she finally said, shifting her seat, trying to get a better sense. “You should have been the one to wake him. His mood would have been better.”

Behind her, Renarion plucked his third seed. She could sense him watching her. She shifted again, reached deeper and with more force.

“Of course,” he said, apparently not hearing much of what she had said. “He is the Shan’do. Much always lays on his heart.” He moved towards the fourth, the last besides hers. “But he seems to carry a heavy burden, wouldn’t you agree?”

Her root was determined to hold onto the earth. Only through great effort could she connect with its life force, as if it were becoming something else other than a simple root. She clamped her teeth, straining to undo its hold.

She gave up with a gasp and rested back on her haunches. Renarion glanced up.

“I’m _fine_.” She said through her teeth. The sweat made her cold. Flecks in the wind stuck to her skin.

“I can get it if you wish.”

“No,” she said. Renarion retreated with a shrug. “I can handle undoing my own tent,” she muttered, quiet enough so that the wind kept it from his ears. “My own damned tent.”

He clasped his arms around himself now. Not even he had been able to figure out the Shan’do’s trick. It gave her a little comfort.

He was staring at the stormy nebula in the distance.

“We should never have come to this place,” he said. “We are powerless. Defenseless.”

She took another breath-heaving break. She had no patience left for conversation. “You question the Shan’do?” she said.

“Of course not,” he said, but she wasn’t so young that she didn’t hear the undertone of sarcasm. “The Shan’do can do no wrong.”

Sel’uen knew how he felt. They were obliged to their teacher. It had seemed like such an honor when she’d gotten the news back in Teldrassil. She imagined it had been the same for the others. The Shan’do Ero’then, on a journey to the reopened Dark Portal, itself a world away. The elders had assigned students to Ero’then so that the honored teacher’s absence wouldn’t be wasted—and he would be protected.

The opportunity of a lifetime.

“I’m not saying—” Renation cut himself off and glanced down to where Ero’then sat with the goblin waiting for his students, who were beginning to finish with their tents and trickle back towards him. “There’s no reason for us to be here,” he murmured, almost to himself. It was difficult to hear him. “I worry that this chase of the Highborne is too personal for him. He is becoming…” He tried to choose his words carefully, “…foolishly passionate.”

She had to hide another smile. “You have always been wise with your words, Thero’shan,” she teased.

Renarion glanced at her severely. “This is not something to jest over, young one,” he said.

“Young one?” she echoed. Now she was grinning. “You might be Thero’shan, but you are hardly my elder. And simply because you’re smarter than the rest of us does not mean you can speak ill of the Shan’do so recklessly.”

“I respect and revere the Shan’do as I should,” Renarion said. “But you’ve heard his screams. While he sleeps.”

The image of Ero’then’s face while he had been trapped in his nightmare sprung unbidden on her. Her smile fell and she rubbed her eyes, trying to drive the image away. A stronger wind tore through the area, almost tearing the tent from her grasp. She tightened her grip.

“We have all been sleeping unwell,” she said. “He warned us of that.”

Renarion helped her hold the tent. “Just as he warned us, I know,” he said, crouching next to her. “The Dream is far from us. But have you heard _me_ shrieking in the midst of my dreams? Have you had the terrors he has? Have any of us?”

She didn’t answer. She did not want to think on her dreams, but they had never been so bad as to wake her screaming.

Not like the Shan’do.

“I thought not,” Renarion said, taking her silence for the answer it was. He tore out his last peg. “His mood has darkened. Would any of our other teachers in Teldrassil so blatantly intimidate someone?” She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off, bringing his tone back down. “All I ask is that we watch him,” he said. “His judgement may be deteriorating.”

She looked down and kicked the stubborn peg. “If we are feeling the grimness of this place, then so does the Shan’do, only a thousandfold,” she said. “We are just learning how to commune with the world. He has been walking with it for millennia. We can’t imagine how this place must be effecting him.”

He nodded once, curtly. It reminded her of the Shan’do. “Perhaps,” he acceded. “But watch yourself anyways. Keep your own safety at the forefront of your mind.”

She nodded as well. Renarion wasn’t one to voice his fears. The fact that he had trusted her with his concern made her treat it with more respect. “And yours,” she told him. “Though you _are_ wrong about us being defenseless.” She pulled out a knife from the back of her belt. She knelt by the peg, pulled it up as far as she could. When she saw the roots peek out from under it, she sawed them off until the seed snapped free.

She glanced at him. His eyebrows were raised high.

“Excellent,” he muttered. He handed her the other seeds, stood stiffly, shouldered his pack, and started to make his way towards the rest of the group. “We have knives. Those will be most effective against Highborne magi.” He moved out of hearing range.

She watched him go. “Well, aren’t we a barrel full of moonlight?” she murmured.

But as she finished rolling up her tent and packing her belongings, she knew Ren’s musings had affected her. She could still see Ero’then’s eyes, glazed over and unseeing, and could still hear him shrieking louder than the wind, like a tortured child.

_We should never have come to this place._

Shivering, she finished packing and headed down to join the rest of the group.


	5. Chapter 5

Ero’then and Drex were waiting when Sel’uen joined the students. They had gathered around the Shan’do, their tents collapsed into heavy packs. Brim handed out food he had prepared. He had long taken on the responsibility of cooking for the group. They accepted his offerings with a few grumbles. His attempts at making their provisions tastier were almost always abysmal failures.

She inclined her head to the Shan’do to show she was ready.

Ero’then nodded. “Our honorable guide will lead us,” he said. Drex grumbled something unintelligible. “My position will be behind him, and yours behind me. Yeshaila, you will watch our rear.” The female nodded. She had the sharpest eyes. She’d also brought a bow, though Sel’uen doubted it’d do much good in the wind.

The formation, with the addition of the goblin, was what they’d traveled in since Ero’then had learned of the quel’dorei pilgrims, way back at the Alliance settlement of Honor Hold.

“And as we go…” Ero’then said. His eyes twinkled. “We will have a lesson.”

Sel’uen looked to Renarion. He straightened a bit and gave her a minuscule shrug.

They hadn’t had a lesson since they’d started hunting the quel’dorei. The Shan’do had been single-minded in his pursuit and their learning had taken a back seat to their usefulness in catching the pilgrims. Though his nightmares hadn’t begun until they’d left the mountains and entered the wasteland, his mood had perceptibly darkened during the chase. Hopefully, this meant a return to form.

She understood the meaning of Renarion’s gesture. _We’ll see._

The others exchanged glances as well. Ero’then cleared his throat and turned to Drex.

“Lead on, Master Drex!” he said. The goblin gave him one last look of disbelief, shook his head then started forward.

The students followed, the storm blocking out the horizon ahead of them. For the first time, the sight of the storm caused Sel’uen’s heart to spike in fear. They were going to _enter_ that maelstrom. She started to think along lines sympathetic to the goblin.

After a few steps, Ero’then turned to face the group. He walked backwards, a talent he’d demonstrated many times during their travels. He gait didn’t slow and he avoided any debris that might have been in his path. He was actually smiling at them.

A change of mood indeed.

“One question I pose,” he said. “It will lead us to our lesson. We crossed from the Blade’s Edge Mountains nearly a week ago. You have had plenty of time to grow acquainted with the landscape since then.” The druid spread out his hands. “What can you tell me of this region?”

The question hung in the stale, biting air for a moment. Drex was still mumbling imperceptibly.

Deciding that she’d fallen behind far enough in the eyes of the others and the Shan’do, Sel’uen decided to try. She cleared her throat, drawing attention. “It is dead?” she asked.

One of Ero’then’s thick eyebrows rose. “A bit broad,” he said. “In fact, a bit inclusive as well.” He looked at the other students. “How should we view every environment?” he asked.

Next to her, Xallon started. “Relationally,” he said, and a couple others echoed him.

“Indeed.” Ero’then sidestepped a boulder. “Every environment is made up of relationships. And, as with our own, this world’s relationships are complex. You _must_ consider every facet a region has to offer you before making conclusions of it or, worse, attempting to inject _yourself_ into that environment. Understanding is the precursor to good conversation. Your lovers will tell you that.” A couple chuckles. “You must understand your environment before you can appropriately commune with it.” He looked at Sel’uen. “Simplifications of these relationships is more than rash. It is dangerous.”

Sel’uen bowed her head. She could feel the full length of her ears burning.

Renarion spoke up. “But Shan’do,” he said. “Would you not agree that this place _is_ dead?”

Ero’then turned to regard him. “Explain your meaning of death,” he said.

“Absence of vitality,” Renarion said. “The land has been drained of all life. Nothing grows here. There are no nutrients in the earth. No water. No life as far as we can see. When the orc warlocks lost control of their magic, the loose, demonic energy they wielded tore this world apart.”

“None of what you have said is wrong, Thero’shan,” the elder druid said. “But did the warlocks destroy _all_ life on this world?”

Renarion hesitated. “No…” he said slowly. “There _is_ the marsh. And the pockets in the mountains—”

“And Terokkar,” Xallon was quick to add. Sel’uen resisted the urge to trip him.

“…and Terokkar.” Renarion shot a malevolent look at the younger student. “And the open plains to the west of there. There are signs of life in some places, but they are all broken or tainted in some way from the warlocks’ magic.”

“Then why is this place different from the others?” the Shan’do asked.

Renarion shrugged. “Perhaps it is like the Peninsula,” he offered. “Just as the Portal has drained the energy of that land, perhaps there is a tainting or draining agent here that is sucking it dry.”

“Possible,” Ero’then said. Drex glanced backwards then, as they passed another cropping of rocks. The druid neatly avoided them. Sel’uen realized the goblin was purposely taking paths that were thick with debris to try and trip up the elder night elf. “Other explanations?” he asked.

Behind them, Yeshaila called, “Maybe it got a whiff a Brim’s cookin’. Decided to off itself.”

Brim growled. Ero’then might have had them all beaten by height, by Brim made the elder look like a twig next to a tree trunk. “Or maybe it was a region under Yesh’s watch,” he mumbled. “And suffered greatly at her “guardianship.””

There was open laughter. Sel’uen glanced back to see Yeshaila’s olive skin darkening. Once in the mountains, she’d scouted ahead and led them straight into an ogre village’s “dumping grounds”.

There was no forgiveness.

“Or perhaps it endured a lesson of antiquity from the Shan’do,” Renarion added coolly. “And died of boredom.”

“All excellent theories.” Their teacher couldn’t hide a bit of a smile himself as his students laughed. Sel’uen joined in. It felt good, and even better to have their moody Shan’do’s permission to laugh. “But this is not a difficult question,” he chided. “Use your sense.”

The chuckles died away. Someone started talking. After a moment, Sel’uen realized that it was Drex. He was muttering loudly, loud enough so they could hear him.

“A whole console panel lands there,” he was saying. It sounded like he was talking to himself. “Fragments of the engine rain down over here. So what? There’s a place with grass and trees and rivers and all sorts of shit over here. There’s a place that looks uglier than your momma’s own kisser over there…” He glared back at the elves. She couldn’t tell if he was angry at them for driving him to his death or at their apparent stupidity.

“Demolitions 101 birdbrains!” he yelled back at them. “Stuff don’t all break the same!”

Ero’then looked more amused by the goblin’s outburst than his students’ jokes. “My thanks, Master Drex,” he said, turning to regard the goblin. “Your wisdom outwits even my own Thero’shan.”

The goblin looked unsure of what to do with the compliment. “Yeah, well, we’re gettin’ close,” he warned. “Few more minutes and we’ll be in the thick of it.”

Sel’uen looked ahead and saw that the goblin was right. The wind had picked up to an even more intense degree. Without realizing it, they had begun to raise their voices to be heard over the howling. She blew her nose into her hands and felt the grit that had begun to accumulate there. She tried glimpsing ahead. The storm didn’t look like it had gotten any closer, but it did look taller and meaner. Like it was ready to gobble them up.

“You ready to reconsider yet?” the goblin yelled. Sel’uen felt like she was.

But Ero’then ignored him, turning instead back to his students. “My point is this,” he said. He had to shout now. “As our guide has so humbly explained, this world has broken apart in an uneven fashion. Total oblivion has not claimed it. Even here, in these wastes, all things are not lost.” He gave them a meaningful look. He had given them a hint.

It hit Sel’uen so suddenly she had no time to second-guess herself. “The storm!” she shouted. She felt some grit slip into her mouth, but it didn’t deter her. “The wind! The weather still functions here!”

The storm was growing so thick that the world was starting to take on a darker, more violet taint. Still, Sel’uen saw Ero’then glance at her. She was overwhelmed by a crushing certainty that she was wrong, that she had misstepped once again.

Then she saw him smile, though she thought it looked grudging. “Very good, Sel’uen,” he said. “These storms are tainted by the Nether, but they are also byproducts of what once had been the natural behavior of the world of Draenor. Thank Elune for it! We shall use it to our advantage. Now comes your lesson!”

The wind had risen to a screaming. They could see one another and hardly any further. The detritus in the air was starting to tear at Sel’uen’s skin. She held herself, staring in astonishment as she saw that a bit of blood had been drawn from her arm.

They were upon the storm. Or - perhaps more appropriately - _it_ was upon them.

“I’m done!” Drex was shrieking to be heard. “No farther! You can’t make me! You’ll have to kill me to take me with you!”

No one was paying him any attention. Ero’then was gesturing for his students to gather around him.

“Come!” he called, and they did. They crowded together into a tight huddle. Sel’uen felt the wind tearing at her back. She looked at the other students. They looked as scared as she felt.

“Open yourself!” their Shan’do shouted. He was still smiling. “Just as you’ve done with the forests! Reach out to me!” And he closed his eyes.

Terrified that she was going to be picked up and sucked into the maelstrom at any moment, Sel’uen screwed her eyes shut. She concentrated, bringing herself into meditation. It was much more difficult than usual.

But it happened. The sound of the screeching wind in her ears died. Replacing it was a simple, fresh breeze.

She was back in Teldrassil. She was high up in a tree, her back to the solid, weathered trunk. She could see Dolanaar below her, her friends and fellow druids playing and testing their abilities against one another in contests. She was far enough away so that she couldn’t hear the sounds of town.

She felt the ancient life of the tree beneath her. Slowly, steadily stretching; searching both for nutrients in the earth and the embrace of the sky. She felt the creatures that made the tree their home. The family of squirrels halfway down, scurrying up and down with a grace she would never achieve, never fully understand. A hive of ants, near the base, building their tiny kingdom. Making strange love with their queen. She giggled.

She was younger here. Curiosity had driven her parents to bring her to the druids. She thought that they were going to teach her how to control the world around her, to change shape as she’d seen the adults do. To walk the woods as a huge, silent saber cat…

But her teachers had had other plans. They’d sent her alone out into the forest. “Find a place that is yours,” they had said. “Go alone. Do not return until you have found it.”

It had been a mystery and she’d run off to discover it. At first she’d been excited to be alone, to be on an adventure. Then frustration set in as she wondered what her teachers had meant. Finally, she’d started to notice how everything in the forest seemed to have a place. Everything except her.

She’d found her spot here, up in the trees. It was high enough to see Dolanaar. It had not been easy, finding a place where she did not bother anything else in the woods. But she’d found it, and when the teachers sent her back out again to learn meditation, she returned to her place and began to wander…

As if in a dream.

It was like sleeping but better. Instead of her own mind conjuring up all sorts of dreams to entertain her, it was one Dream, one world so like her own. She learned more of the squirrels building their family. Of the ants constructing their empire.

She touched all these things—as a mate touches the familiar curves and blemishes of her lover. She herself knew very little of that, but it was _that_ analogy which Shan’do Ero’then used to teach them. He always stressed to her and the others the importance of _intimacy_. Of knowing your world so well it was like a bed-companion. She had come to be familiar with many things this way, meditating on her branch in sight of Dolanaar.

Now she reached out to touch a new thing, something she had never thought to touch before. The gentle, soft kiss of the breeze. She stroked it, then cradled it.

Dread seeped into the dream. It was the wind. She recoiled, feeling violated. It was screaming. It was not—

_It needs you._

Ero’then’s voice. Then there were other voices. Five more. Renarion, more familiar. Xallon. Brim. Yeshaila. Kel. They each entered her dream and she also felt them at her side in the corporeal world.

Renarion led the effort. Ero’then was there, too, but she sensed he was holding back, letting his students do the work. In the storm, Sel’uen gritted her teeth and threw herself into the effort.

It was like trying to calm a child in a tantrum. At first they tried to be gentle with it, but Ero’then told them strength was needed. The air was sick.

So they worked. They cornered it. They wrestled it. They pinned it. They always tried to soothe it, but it would not be calmed by urgings alone. Force was used.

It took time. She did not know how much time. But they eventually wrestled the tortured wind into submission. They forced it to relax. The exertion was drawing Sel’uen into the corporeal world, but she resisted the urge to rest. She felt the other students having similar struggles.

Finally, they bent the storm to their will. It calmed.

 _Well done._ Ero’then took the burden from them.

Sel’uen woke with a gasp and fell back. The violet maelstrom still raged above her.

But not _around_ her. With an effort, she raised her head. They were in something like a bubble, a house-sized haven in the storm. Sel’uen raised her arm. There was a breeze—soft and quiet.

A couple of the others moaned as they got to their feet. Renarion was the first one standing. Ero’then watched them all work their way to their feet.

It took them several moments to process what they had done. Slowly, Sel’uen became aware of a dull sort of pressure. She reached out to it, and realized that the spell - if it could be called that - required constant attention, though not much from her alone. The Shan’do was shouldering the burden, though he didn’t look strained. Doubtless it was easier for him than for them. Still, they were all contributing, at least in bits. Thus the pressure.

“Is this a wide enough area for you, Master Drex?” Ero’then asked. The howling of the storm around them was still present, but it was greatly deadened like they’d muffled it with a gag. “Can you guide us in it? I can widen it, if you wish.”

The goblin was sitting down. His arms were limp at his side and his eyes were wide open. Ero’then called to him again.

“Huh?” he blinked and glanced. “Oh, yeah. That’s good. It’s plenty.” He looked equal parts humbled, shaken and grateful. Sel’uen had never thought to see that combination in a goblin.

“Good,” Ero’then said. “We’ll rest here a moment, then we’ll be on our way again. Well done, my students.” He sent a nod in Renarion’s direction. The Thero’shan looked jaded, but grateful for the acknowledgement. They didn’t grudge him it. He had led the effort. “You’re better in practice than theory.”

“Thanks,” Brim said. Nervous chuckles.


	6. Chapter 6

With minimal effort, the bubble moved with them. Sel’uen kept a close eye on it, and she thought that it periodically expanded, though she felt no extra strain. She guessed it was a natural fluctuation or the Shan’do's doing. He had fallen into his more usual, pensive silence again.

She supposed she knew what he was thinking. They were all thinking it. With the storm now conquered, it was impossible not to consider what was coming next.

The Highborne.

It was still a mystery why the Shan’do had given up their regular training for a chase. He’d heard the rumors from Alliance soldiers that a band of Highborne magi (the humans had just called them elves, but the kaldorei knew them for who they really were) had passed through Honor Hold on a mission. They hadn’t been allowed inside, as relations with Quel’Thalas had been dubious since the Third War. They’d been sent on their way, but not before stamping their feet, claiming to be unarmed pilgrims.

“Yeah. Unarmed,” Sel’uen remembered a human guardsman grumbling. “They could roast the whole damned compound with just the fireballs out their asses.”

After vehemently cross-examining those who had seen the elves, Ero’then had told the leader of the Red Sons—the human-dominated guild they’d crossed the Portal with, and to which they had been attached—that he was going after them. The man - Bern - had looked at the Shan’do strangely, but then simply shrugged.

No explanation was given to the students. All they got from Ero’then was that they’d be pursuing their training in the field. And they did.

Sel’uen had talked to Renarion about it once in the marshes, when they had been scavenging for food.

“It’s an elders thing,” he had told her. “They don’t like Highborne.”

That was no news to her. After the stories she’d been raised on, she wasn’t eager to meet one either.

“He was there,” Renarion had added.

“Where?” she asked.

He’d given her an exasperated look. Sometimes, when she was around him, she felt much younger than she ought. “The War of the Ancients,” he told her. “He was there.”

That had given her food for thought. She had known that some of the elders had been alive before the Sundering. Some, but not many. Ero’then himself wasn’t exactly considered an “elder” even though he was a Shan’do.

The more she’d thought about it, the more questions had been raised. And the more questions she’d had, things she had taken as matters of course became strange to her for the first time.

Why _hadn’t_ Ero’then been treated more like an elder by the other elders back in Teldrassil? For young druids he was a dream Shan’do, a bit of a legend in his own right. But where did that legend come from? She couldn’t remember any reason for it, other than whispers about a mysterious place called the Deepwood. Whatever it was, it was never shared with the “youth.”

She’d had a thought, one that had troubled her and kept her awake some nights, when she let herself wonder how this little adventure would end. The dogged, seemingly never-ending chase had consumed their training. Until today, they hadn’t had a lesson since they’d entered the mountains.

Perhaps Ero’then’s hatred of the quel’dorei ran deeper than was proper.

She hadn’t dwelt on these things for some time. The bizarre landscape of the wasteland had occupied her energy and thoughts. Now, though, with the confrontation with the quel’dorei looming over them all, she had found her thoughts drawing in that direction again.

She tried to shake her doubts. Whatever Ero’then’s reasons for the chase, they must have been justified. She trusted the Shan’do, even if his treatment of them (and her) was less than kind. He was a hard teacher, but a good one. She would follow him to the ends of the world.

Looking around, she realized she already had.

 


	7. Chapter 7

It happened without warning.

They’d been two days into the storm. Drex had just given a speech to justify his faith in the path he’d chosen.

He told them that the green-eyes (as he called them, which Sel’uen still didn’t understand) hadn’t been the first pilgrims to pass through Area 52. Apparently, quel’dorei looking for a supposed “Promised Land” had been arriving at regular intervals in the wastelands.

Sel’uen thought it ironic that a place they called the Promised Land would look so, well, unpromising. Just more evidence of how arcane magic warped the mind.

But Drex seemed to believe that the quel’dorei had several points of congregation. “Some of ‘em knew where they were going, some of ‘em didn’t,” he explained. “They never wanted me going with them. I don’t think they want people knowing where it is. Keeping their little virgin countryside to themselves.” He snorted, letting them all know exactly what he thought of _that_ cute little hope. “Anyway, I gotta make a living right? So the ones that don’t really know where they’re going, I point them in the right direction. I picked up some details when they stopped by our bar. Elves love to drink, I guess.” He thought about that comment. “Or at least, these ones did. It looked desperate, really. Kind of sad. Like every last one of ‘em was an alcoholic. And I _never_ regret taking people’s money.”

From that ascertained information, Drex had some good guesses on where the quel’dorei’s meeting places were. He was leading them now to the nearest one, the one he’d pointed their quarry to.

“Best I got,” he’d said to Ero’then, looking a bit anxious. The druid had just nodded.

The Shan’do’s mood had blackened again. He’d snapped at Sel’uen for being too slow to grab her things and gather her tent one morning. She had been near tears.

The first night the goblin had woken up, cursing, terrified, to Ero’then’s nighttime screaming. Renarion had had to explain it to him as best as he could.

“Why don’t you tell him?” The goblin had shivered, but there was little actual suggestion in his question. He seemed to understand.

Now they walked in their usual order, excepting that the distant between Ero’then and the students and the distance between Ero’then and the goblin had widened. The Shan’do hadn’t seemed to notice.

Sel’uen had been fortunate enough to have been looking forward when it happened. At first she thought they were just bigger boulders, battering around in the storm like the others. But they didn’t seem to be moving all that much. Then, all of a sudden, they burst through their bubble and came screaming down on them.

Three balls of fire.

All Sel’uen did was shriek. Ero’then reacted better, snapping his arms to the side like he was tearing a curtain. The bubble shattered for a single, horrific moment and then wind screamed at full blast. The fireballs exploded, raining debris down around them. Then the bubble reappeared, now much smaller.

“With me!” Ero’then roared, and Sel’uen - disoriented - scrambled towards him alongside the others. Drex came too. He was swearing, totally panicked. They crowded on each other in a ball.

“How do they see us?” Renarion shouted. The quel’dorei knew they were chasing them, based on the paths they had taken throughout the chase. They had probably known since the mountains. Ero’then didn’t answer him, but it was easy enough to guess. Some sort of spell, or scrying. Something.

“They’re not far ahead!” the Shan’do yelled. She wondered how he knew that, and if he had known that, why he hadn’t warned them. “Most likely, they’ll be ready for us. Follow my path exactly! They’ve most likely trapped the area.”

Sel’uen started shaking. The idea of fighting and killing - abstract before - suddenly became very real. They’d fought off wild beasts and monsters before, but other elves… She hadn’t known what she had expected to happen once they caught up to the Highborne. A tiny part of her, maybe, had held out hope that the Shan’do could handle them practically alone, or do it peacefully.

It did not look like that was going to be the case.

But the Shan’do left her with little time to devolve into panic. “We go now!” Ero’then shouted, and he sprinted ahead. The bubble stretched the follow him, and they had to run after him or be swallowed by the storm. They formed into a more-or-less serpentine line. Fear drove them to a great speed.

All they could see for a while was the constant purple blur of the storm. But Ero’then didn’t slow, so they didn’t either. She kept her eyes to the sky as often as she could, looking for more missiles. The shapes of larger debris lodged balls of anxiety in her throat.

Then they entered a clearing.

It was like a breath of fresh air and Sel’uen gasped. The clearing was big enough that she couldn’t determine the end of it. The border she had just passed through was glimmering with a translucent bluish color and it was a crisp border. Theirs had been shifting constantly but this area seemed to be held in check with exactness. 

Immediately ahead of them was a curving ridge that climbed several dozen yards up into the air. After a moment to get her bearings, Sel’uen realized there were several small figures astride the top of the ridge. They stood stark against the violet storm with their pale skin and their heavy, multi-colored robes billowing in the wind. They were staring down into the valley the night elves had just entered.

They had just entered a killing field.

Terror drove her to an even greater sprint. Her fellow students seemed to have much the same idea. They chased Ero’then who picked a careful, but quickly traversed, path through the valley.

Above them, the Highborne gestured in sync with one another. They raised their hands and a blur of light filled the sky. Thick shards of ice filled the air above them and started hurtling down on the kaldorei.

Ero’then shouted something. For once Sel’uen thought ahead of him.

In mid-stride she went down on all fours, feeling her mouth fill out with elongated teeth and her frame bulk up considerably. She now ran as a saber cat—and much faster. She was also quicker to react, which helped when the ice started landing.

She had to deviate from Ero’then’s wild scramble through the valley. If she hadn’t, she would have been shredded by the razor-sharp ice. As it was, she had to leap, roll and spin, making her saber cat self look like it was doing acrobatics you would never see an actual saber cat perform. Even with her newfound agility, however, there was a lot of ice. Some of it found her.

She caught a couple glancing blows which stung but didn’t do much damage. But one large shard found purchase in the back of her back, tearing a huge gash in what she considered her hips. She exclaimed in pain and it came out as a roar. The ice, lodging part of itself in her, flooded her feline body with extreme frigidity. She felt her muscles and bones grow slower, like their hinges were thickening with ice.

She pushed herself on anyways. However much it slowed her, she was too scared to stop. Ahead, she saw a reddish saber cat do much the same thing she had just done. He was dodging, deviating from Ero’then’s path.

The earth under him detonated and a thick geyser of fire shot up around him. He was sent - flaming - across the valley.

She thought she screamed, but it couldn’t find its way out of her throat. Her mind scrambled to think, even to feel. Had that been…?

More ice formed above them, scattering her thoughts. But then, suddenly, it dissipated and came down as small, harmless pieces. Sel’uen looked up and saw that the quel’dorei were dispersing in light of a thick cloud formation gathering around them. One had been knocked prone and the others were getting drenched with water trying to regain their focus.

Sel’uen looked to her Shan’do. He hadn’t even slowed.

He scaled the rocky ridge. He was still in the form of an elf, something she found strange. The angle wasn’t too difficult to climb, so they made good progress up its side. One high elf actually ran towards them, her robe heavy with water. She raised a hand and shouted words.

A huge structure of fire - more a blob than a ball - streaked towards them. It was then that Ero’then changed, and he changed into the form a towering bear streaked with runes and markings and scars. He roared and, instead of avoiding the fire, ran towards it and let it envelop him.

The impact knocked him off his clawed feet, but only barely. He stumbled, and it was enough hesitation for Sel’uen and the others to finally catch up to him. When they got to him, he had regained his footing. The front of him was still burning, but he charged forwards, roaring like a demigod.

The high elf, seeing the huge, burning creature coming towards her, looked like she might have soiled herself and fled to her comrades. When she ran, Ero’then changed shape back into a kaldorei. Sel’uen realized he was mending his own burning flesh. He was running up the rest of the ridge. Sel’uen didn’t have the time to be impressed.

The Shan’do’s storm had been largely dissipated by the Highborne. So when the night elves finally crested the ridge, the Highborne were stretched out before them in a line, their staves drawn up for a fight. They were veritably crackling with power, but Sel’uen thought they looked tired. They were clustered together, drenched by the rain…

Then she saw what Drex had meant.

Each of the Highborne’s eyes were glimmering a dark emerald. Their eyes _themselves_ were not emerald, but rather there was an aura of emerald-like color that leaked from their eyes. The bizarre sight made them look sick, like the green was some glowing, intangible puss that darkened and yet enhanced their eyes. They pulsed in sync with the soft crackling of the rest of their bodies.

_Green eyes. Pilgrims._

They attacked again, as one. They surged forward, throwing spells of varying potency and composition.

It was hard for Sel’uen to see what happened then. She didn’t have the mind or reflexes for combat, but she did her best. When the Highborne attacked, the night elves responded in kind. One of the students summoned wind gales, throwing them at the enemy. Most leapt towards the mages in their own shape-shifted forms, seeking to get a handle on them. The mages did little damage, throwing spells that singed and froze and hurt to keep them back. They were yelling at each other in Thalassian. Dimly, Sel’uen realized that one of the mages—a pretty-looking female with long, now wild, orangish hair—seemed to be trying to give orders.

Above all this, Sel’uen became more aware of Ero’then’s contributions. He was gathering a darker and more powerful storm to himself, one that seemed ripped from the netherstorm itself. He was hurling it at the quel’dorei, and soon all the Highborne could do was keep him at bay. The one with the orange hair alone stood her ground and fought Ero’then, her face drawn in a grimace of rage and power, while her companions drew further and further back, retreating slowly down the back of the ridge into a small valley.

Then their leader herself had to fall back—but not before throwing another burst of power that sent Ero’then’s storm rolling away.

The kaldorei gave chase. In the heat of battle—Sel’uen had gotten a good chunk of one of the males, enough so that he was favoring his left leg now—Sel’uen had not heard much. But now, in the lull, she realized that her Shan’do was yelling at the quel’dorei, almost having to scream to be heard over the netherstorm. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, but then she realized why. He was speaking Thalassian.

The kaldorei, deep in the thrill of battle, formed up for another charge at the Highborne. Sel’uen thought that they couldn’t last another round. Victory was about to be theirs. The Shan’do must have been demanding their surrender.

But then she saw the streaks in the sky.

More debris? No. More fireballs then, and she tensed, trying to get a read on where they were going to land. Each had a trail behind them like a comet. A trail like a tear—colored like the Highborn’s eyes.

Then another thing caught her eye in the valley below. Out of the pristinely drawn perimeter the mages had created for the battlefield, a few figures exited the storm. Misshaped things whose appearance choked Sel’uen with shock, and then black horror.

She looked to the sky again. The others, even the Highborne, now had seen what she had seen. The comets rained down on the battlefield, shaking it with their thunderous arrival.

The cry rose up from everywhere. The Highborne turned their backs to the night elves. The night elves ran towards them.

Ero’then’s roaring voice cut through the storm.

“ _LEGION!_ ”


	8. Chapter 8

_“Well?” he asked. “I know you’re dying to say something”_

_Anora’s arms were crossed. “Well,” she echoed. “If I’m being honest, I think you look ridiculous.”_

_Ero’then looked down at his garb. It was thick and heavy, practically a robe. Its designs were intricately woven into the material, forming complex patterns which drove him to question whether they meant anything or if they simply complete nonsense. His judgement had been forestalled, however, by the praise he’d gotten from the other women in town for it. After that, he supposed it couldn’t have been all bad._

_“Ridiculous?” Ero’then in turn echoed her. “Hm. I was hoping for something a little more encouraging.”_

_Anora flicked her eyes over him again. The disapproval was thick in her voice. “If you wanted encouragement, you should have worn something else. Or asked someone else, perhaps. You look…” She shrugged and said again with exasperation, “Ridiculous.”_

_They were on the road just outside of town. Ero’then had already said his goodbyes. They had given him a proper send-off and Ero’then had felt truly blessed by the depth with which everyone had drawn the joy out of their hearts for him._

_The war had been hard on them all, and many loved ones had gone or had been lost already. They found hope in him, though. They knew what importance he had been chosen for— that he was not just another soldier off to war._

_But Anora had been poking fun at him all day. All the way to the road. He had been hoping to draw a little something more from her now. Before he left._

_“You know,” he said. “If I die saving the world, and the last thing you said to me was that I looked ridiculous, it will be you who will feel the fool.”_

_“I would have spoken truly. What would I regret?.”_

_“You would have no regrets at all?”_

_“No,” she said. “Well, perhaps you’re right. I would have felt guilty that I had failed to convince you to change out of those ridiculous clothes. That, as you saved the world, you looked like an ass.”_

_Goddess, it was pulling teeth with her. He smiled weakly. “It does look a bit strange,” he finally acceded._

_Silence fell between them. In one hand, Ero’then held the reins of a horse. Anora stood just off the road. There was a breeze in the air._

_He cleared his throat again. “What will you do while I’m gone?” he asked her._

_She shrugged again. Her arms were still crossed, and she had to keep looking down to get her hair from her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll find something. I heard there was a group of resisters near the Deepwoods. Maybe I’ll go help them there. Mingle with the soldiers. Find a mate who knows how to make love.”_

_Ero’then protested loudly. Great and abundant detail went into his defense. He went to such graphic lengths to argue his case that he finally dragged a tiny smile onto Anora’s face._

_“Quiet. Ero’then. For the goddess’s sake, be quiet. People will hear you.” She sighed. “Hero indeed. And you’re going to die looking like that. We’re all doomed.”_

_“I’ll be right here,” Ero’then told her. “Right here.” He pointed out a particular cobble beneath his feet, shaped like a coil of string. “After the demons are gone, I’ll be right there. I expect you to be too when I come back.”_

_“I barely dragged you out of your childhood. How can I expect you to make it back from this? I can’t very well wait for you.”_

_“Just think of it this way,” he told her. “Imagine the waiting. Imagine the tension. You might think you’re missing out, but trust me. It will be worth it.”_

_She took a long moment to stare at him.“I can’t believe you’re going to look like that,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re going to look like that when you die.” She started crying._

_He pulled her towards him. She complied, her head going into his shoulder. Then she looked up and he kissed her._

_Ero’then considered this their first kiss. He had botched the first one, which, as she had just demonstrated, Anora planned to hold over him for as long as the two of them lived._

_As she wrung his rib-cage in a hug tight enough to hold a bear captive, he knew she had been hoping to hold it over him for a long time._

_“I’ll find you,” he promised her. “When it’s over, I’ll find you. I promise.”_


	9. Chapter 9

The demons were after the Highborne. Ero’then planned accordingly.

“With me, with me!” he called again to his students. It took them a few moments to shake themselves out of their battle-craze and join him. They were all shape-shifted, which he was glad for. They were safer that way. They weren’t far enough along for anything else. Even Renarion would have struggled to form more than a shower.

It was their responsibility to learn. It was his to protect them.

He pulled them back to the lip of the ridge and glanced down. No demons from the rear. He turned back to the Highborne and saw that they had formed a circle, their staves pointed outwards. The demons were coming at them from multiple directions. They were generally of the weaker types. The female Highborne with the orange hair - clearly their leader - had destroyed one of the infernals on its way down. The other she had only been able to misdirect into the storm.

They threw spells of a dozen different types at their enemies. One even summoned a fiery golem to do battle with the infernal. They worked their magic, butchering the demons as fast as they came.

Ero’then couldn’t help but snort. Fools. If they would have just looked up the hill, they would have seen the night elves watching the battle progress with all serenity. The demons had hardly looked at them.

He felt his students’ impatience. He decided to head it off at the pass.

“Have you noticed their eyes?” he asked them.

A couple students exchanged glances. The others were still breathing heavily, expecting to leap back into the fight. When he indicated for them to shift back into their natural forms to speak, it took them a few moments to do so.

He looked them over. They were winded and battered.  
In between catching her breath, Sel’uen spoke. “They’re green,” she said.

Ero’then resisted the urge to sigh. “Thank you, Sel’uen. I myself couldn’t tell the pigment. _Why_ are their eyes green? Is this a common trait of the Highborne?”

No one answered. Drex was shivering. He was closest to the lip of the ridge, apparently wanting maximum distance from the action.

“The answer is no,” Ero’then said. They knew that, but this was one of their first combats. He knew how difficult it was for the untempered to use their minds after a fight. “The Highborne have never had this feature. But these Highborne,” he indicated to the circle of magi, “do.”

He let that sink in. The sound of the demons and the shouting quel’dorei punctuated the air. “I’m not asking you to give me an answer as to why this phenomenon exists. But I want you to think on it, and consider it seriously. Soon you will have your answer, whether you want it or not.”

“Want do you mean, Shan’do?” Renarion asked. He was the most anxious of all. His eyes could hardly leave the battle. “Are we going to help them? Or are we going to leave them to the demons?”

“No,” Ero’then said. “We need them alive.” He saw the uncomfortable looks in his students’ eyes and decided he’d better be clearer. “What are the Highborne using to defend themselves?” he asked.

“Magic,” Yeshaila said.

“The arcane, yes. Where does this power come from?”

Renarion answered. He looked like he had caught up to his master’s reasoning. “It is energy,” he said. “Demons are attracted to it.”

“Yes, demons _are_ drawn to the arcane,” Ero’then agreed. “But not all magic. It takes a great deal of power to draw a demon’s attention. The Highborne have been reckless with their spellcasting. We are too near the Nether for demons not to notice. What else strikes you about the behavior of the demons?”

They all looked down on the fight. Kel answered.

“They’re disorganized,” he murmured. “They could be a lot more effective with some tactics. They’re just attacking. They’re not working together.”

“Very good Kel. What does that tell us?”

“They’re just demons who happened to be nearby enough to notice the use of magic,” Renarion answered. “This isn’t a calculated attack. We weren’t ambushed.” He looked at the Shan’do. “They’re going to keep coming for the Highborne. Like you said, Shan’do; this place is too close to the Nether. Until the Highborne stop using their magic, the demons will keep coming.”

“So when will the Highborne stop using their magic?” Ero’then asked him.

“When they run out of…” Renarion grappled for the term. “ _Magic_.”

“Yes,” Ero’then said. “The Highborne will fight, and their fighting will draw more demons, which will cause them to cast more spells, and so on.” He directed their gaze down to the fight. “The cycle only ends when the Highborne run out of arcane energy.” He didn’t tell his students that these Highborne probably had arcane crystals and other things to siphon from that would extend the combat. They didn’t understand these things yet and he didn’t want to explain everything. He wanted them to make the coming discoveries on their own. He wanted them to see, firsthand, the dangers of the arcane.

To the young night elves, Ero’then’s words must have seemed prophetic. Eventually, after minutes of fighting, the Highborne’s magic grew less and less spectacular. And, after a bit of a lag, the demons started coming in fewer and fewer numbers. The battle dwindled down until the only magic in use was half-hearted shoves of arcane power. The last of the demons closed in on the Highborne.

“Come,” he told his students. They ran down the hill, charging into the fray. They hit the demons from behind. Suddenly, the orange-haired mage gave a shout.

Ero’then realized it too late.

The quel’dorei leader was no fool. At her word, a huge burst of magic disintegrated the last of the demons and knocked his students back, one or two of them on their backs.

The quel’dorei, though clearly exhausted, turned on their new foe and unleashed the last of their wrath.

Ero’then swore, throwing forward a storm to protect his students. The Highborne had clearly expected no mercy from kaldorei and had wanted to draw them into the fight, so that the quel’dorei could bring them down with them.

His students took a couple hits, recovered, then charged, dunked into battle-rage again. Ero’then tried to call them back, but knew it was too late.

Their leader was grinning madly at him. “We die together, wild one!” she called, her hair stuck to her face shiny with sweat. She threw another clumsy, but highly powered spell at him.

Roaring, he charged the girl. Indeed, she looked little more than a girl. But the quel’dorei valued their looks greatly, and she was also a mage, so he couldn’t be sure. He could hear the vile folly of youth in her taunt. It enraged him.

The demons came again. The Highborne leader was formidable. She kept drawing power out of some vast well within her and she kept fighting furiously, both keeping him at bay and drawing in more demons.

Finally, he exhausted her. She collapsed onto her staff, then fell on her ass. The green burning in her eyes burned with intense heat now. She was drained.

So too, it seemed, were the other quel’dorei. They fell to fighting demons with cantrips and their staves and blades. They didn’t want to die, though Ero’then doubted their leader did either. They had thought the night elves would wait until they had spent themselves, then finish them off themselves. Their frame of mind had turned to revenge, not suicide.

So he cried, “ _Do not hurt the Highborne!_ ” in Thalassian and his own speech, and turned his attention to the fight with the demons. They came gibbering and shaking, and roaring their unintelligible battle cries, but other than the two infernals that had attacked, they were not what Ero’then considered dangerous demons. That, of course, was entirely his subjective view, as he was certain his students would have disagreed. They were dragging. Despite his best efforts to protect them from the most dangerous foes, he saw more serious wounds start to appear. Above them, the Highborne’s magic field was starting to waver. He bolstered it with his own control, keeping the storm at bay.

The battle drew to an end. The corpses of the demons lay in small heaps. Imps. Small void walkers. The occasional miniature felhound. But there were many of them, and they bled their black ichor onto the scarred earth.

Silence - except for the howling wind around them - finally fell.

Ero’then looked around. His students were in various states of collapse. He counted them off, and found that one was missing. Brim. Renarion was the only one standing, and he only barely. His Thero’shan watched the Highborne guardedly.

The high elves had collapsed to a person. The only way he could tell that they were not dead was their breathing. Their chests rose and fell hungrily.

Still, he thought it appropriate to say something. “Do not resist,” he told them. His own breathing was labored. “We are not going to kill you.”

The Highborn did not respond. Except for their leader, he realized. She had turned her head to look at him.

Her gaze was on him with an intensity he did not expect, nor understand. A smirk stretched the side of her mouth up towards her ear, as if a knife had drawn it.


	10. Chapter 10

He set his students to guard the Highborne. Yeshaila looked like she had broken her leg, so she remained down with Sel’uen watching over her.

It was when Ero’then was taking better stock of the situation that he saw the goblin.

Drex was lying several meters away from the main battle. He was on his side, and around him were a couple demon corpses. One had died on top of him. It was a felhound.

Ero’then sprinted to him. He shoved the demons off the guide and growled disgustedly as he tore one of the felhound’s sucker-like arms out from Drex’s cheek.

He caught his breath when he saw that Drex was still breathing. Barely.

His green skin had deteriorated to a sort of yellow. The demon blood covered his face and chest and arms. Ero’then put his hand to the goblin’s head and swore softly.

He spent some time with him, cleaning him up and working the best of his healing abilities. He tore off his pack and worked with the few herbs he had. Behind him, he felt his students’ gazes.

But Drex had been more than wounded. The combination of the demon blood and the hound’s life-sucking ability had left the goblin’s body broken and largely unable to function. He could only do so much.

Finally, he picked Drex up and carried him over to his students and the Highborne. A couple of the high elves had sat up, and were sitting complacently. Their leader was also sitting. His students were eying them nervously, but they also seemed anxious about their Shan’do’s cargo.

“Is he dead, Shan’do?” Renarion asked.

Ero’then glanced sharply at his Thero’shan. “No, Renarion,” he snapped. “Master Drex is _not_ dead. He still breathes and his heart still beats.” Carefully, Ero’then placed the goblin down and undid his pack.

Renarion said, a bit more compassionately than before, “Is he sick, Shan’do? Is there something we can do?”

“No,” he said. He retrieved his tent and began unfolding it. “I’ve done all I can for him. The demon has made him weak. He must fight his own battle now.”

Renarion did not ask further. Ero’then was glad he didn’t. He knew well enough what his Thero’shan was thinking.

Their guide was dying. And they were stranded in the middle of the Netherstorm.


	11. Chapter 11

Once he had set up Drex inside his tent, Ero’then marched to the group.

His students waited for him to finish counting heads. The Highborne were almost all sitting up now, and they watched their captors with largely blank expressions. They knew they were powerless. They were just waiting for their doom to be pronounced on them. There were seven of them, including their leader.

“My students,” he said, in Darnassian, so the Highborne couldn’t hear. “You told me that we lost Brim today. I am sorry.”

Nods. Renarion had explained what they had found after the battle. One of the Highborne’s magical traps in the valley had claimed Brim’s life.

The loss of Brim made Ero’then angry, angrier, in fact, than he allowed himself to show. He could still see the after-images of tears in Yeshaila and Sel’uen’s eyes. Xallon looked shaken.

Ero’then next explained the situation with Drex. They took the news well, despite its implications.

“We cannot move with him as sick as he is,” Ero’then said. “So we will make camp here.” He looked at the Highborne. “As for our guests…”

He then began to switch in and out of Thalassian, so that both his students and the Highborne understood what was about to happen. Almost as soon as he started talking again, however, the leader of the high elves interrupted him.

“We are not Highborne,” she said. “We are children of blood. We are sin’dorei.”

Ero’then let her speak. He watched as his students exchanged glances. She spoke in broken spurts of Darnassian, and Ero’then was impressed. If she was so young, where had she learned to speak a language her people hadn’t heard in millennia?

He let her words sink in to his students. Then he said, “What is your name, sin’dorei?”

The girl straightened and stood. Compared to a night elven female, she was tiny. Sel’uen had a whole head and a half on her. But she still bore herself with the pride that had damned her people so many times to tragedy.

“I am Karielle Sunstrike,” she said. “A mage of the Kirin Tor. I speak for my brothers and sisters.”

Ero’then smirked at her. “You are a long way from Dalaran, mage of the Kirin Tor,” he said.

Her green eyes smoldered at him. “Circumstances have led me to discontinue my studies,” she said.

“Ah,” Ero’then said. “Your studies.” He walked towards her, entering the small ring of Highborne. “How long did you study in Dalaran before these _circumstances_ intervened?”

“Many years,” Karielle said. Her gaze was locked onto Ero’then. “Both my father and mother were archmagi.”

“I see,” Ero’then said. He paced around the Highborne, circling Karielle. He knew he was being watched closely, both by the sin’dorei and his students. “What circumstances were these that drove you from Dalaran, mage of the Kirin Tor?”

“I was not _driven_ from Dalaran,” she corrected him. “I left of my own will.”

“Did you?” Ero’then mused. “So you are no longer a mage of the Kirin Tor.”

Up until then, she had been answering his questions without hesitation. Now she paused. The silence was heavy in the air.

“I left with the Kirin Tor’s blessing,” she said.

“Indeed? Then only one of these can be true: You are no sin’dorei at all, or you were in Quel’Thalas when the Scourge came.”

She stood straighter. It was as if he had a rod rammed up her ass. “I was in Quel’Thalas,” she said.

“Is that so? Then you are a liar.”

She was taken aback. Eyes turned on her. “What do you mean?” she said.

“If you are a sin’dorei, and you left Dalaran before the fall of Quel’Thalas, then you would know what became of your prince.”

Now she knew where he was going. “Our prince was turned away without cause!” she suddenly shouted. “Our people _built_ that city. The humans would not know a cantrip without us. We need not the Kirin Tor.”

“So you are _not_ Kirin Tor,” Ero’then pointed at her.

She knew she was trapped. She gritted out a smile for him and his students. “We need not the Kirin Tor,” she repeated. “We are _sin’dorei_. What business do you have with us, druid? You’ve hunted us across this world. We have done nothing to you. What do you want?”

Ero’then smiled again. “You have asked that, sin’dorei. I have but one question for you.” He held out his arms. “Why are you here?”

She matched his smile with a grin. “Paradise, kaldorei,” she said. “Paradise.”

He asked her many more questions, but she was apparently finished speaking. She simply grinned at him now, and he had to admit that that wild grin unsettled him greatly. He guessed that was the point of it.

So he stopped asking questions and started giving orders.

“I do not wish to be cruel,” he said to the blood elves. “If you are fair to us, we will be fair to you. We will not bind you. We have tents, and every sin’dorei will stay with a kaldorei. Renarion and Kel will take two each.” He glanced at Karielle. “You will stay with me,” he said.

If possible, the mad grin grew wider.

 

***

 

Once all the tents were set up, Renarion snatched a moment alone with Ero’then.

“Shan’do,” the student began. “Do you think this arrangement wise?”

“Are you questioning my wisdom, Thero’shan?”

“No, Shan’do. Never. I simply fear for the younger students.” Ero’then could see the same fear in Renarion’s eyes.

Ero’then laid a hand on his eldest student. He looked him directly in the eyes.

“Renarion, the Highborne are greatly weakened. They have used up their reserves of arcane energy. Their physical bodies are exhausted. If you need to, you should be able to overpower them easily. Besides,” he said, as his student looked like he was about to say something else. “They know they are trapped here. I’ve taken the burden of the storm on my own shoulders. If something were to happen to us, they would be helpless.”

Renarion was nodding. Still, Ero’then saw the anxiety in his eyes. That was good. He was right to be afraid of sin’dorei. They had little power, but they did have one thing going for them, one that _blood_ _elves_ were known for.

Desperation.


	12. Chapter 12

The sin’dorei acquiesced to the order. They had all, to a man and a woman, looked to Karielle when asked to enter their assigned tents, and the girl had given them a curt nod. When she did it, though, Ero’then made sure he was seen standing beside her, ready to lead her into his tent.

Once everyone was where they were supposed to be, Ero’then waited for Karielle to look to him.

He held out a hand, indicating for her to go first. She entered without complaint.

Before following, he looked to the sky. The shimmering blue that held back the storm had all but vanished. He had been keeping it back in the same position since the combat.

Now he let the storm invade the area.

The rigid hold the blood elves’ magic had had on the storm vanished. The storm came forward in bulges and streaks, closing down the sky and marching furiously towards the tents. He let it rage until he thought the bubble was of suitable size, then he held the storm in check there. It howled and screamed, like it had been promised something and then cheated of it.

He looked to the tent that had Drex’s body. He had assigned Sel’uen to that tent, along with a blood elf who had been wounded by the demons. She would be fine.

He stayed outside for several more minutes, looking over the tents and watching the storm rage. The stale air grew colder. There was no rhyme or reason to the temperature, he had discovered. The region was chaos, bordering the Nether itself. Logic was barely an acquaintance of this place.

He stayed a while longer. Then he ducked inside.

 

***

 

Karielle had unpacked her things in a corner of the tent. She had emptied her backpack and unrolled her sleeping blanket. When he entered, she turned to look at him. Ero’then took the moment to evaluate her.

On an aesthetic level, Ero’then couldn’t deny that she could turn heads. Even now, far from civilization in any form, with dirt and grit and sweat marking her face, he had to give her credit where credit was due: she didn’t hurt him to look at. Her hair was a blood orange and she had worn it in a tie during and after the battle, but now it hung free. It ran over her shoulder blades. She wore a comfortable-looking robe, which might have looked very stylish once, but the journey and the storm had not been kind to it, and it was heavily stained and strained in more than a few places. She could have done with a change of clothes. She even smelled a little.

She didn’t seem afraid to let him look her over. In fact, when he entered, she had turned and appeared to do much the same thing to him. She still looked confrontational but her proud smirk was gone, instead replaced by a small frown that dipped deeper as she studied him like a swimmer testing the waters with a toe. Her true eye color was a startlingly vivid blue straining at the burning green that caged it.

“Do you plan to sleep?” she asked him.

The battle and its aftereffects had occurred after a long day of marching. There was no way to tell the day. Ero’then was tired. He knew she had it worse but she covered it well.

“Yes,” he said.

She indicated to the floor. His bedroll was slumped in a corner, where he had tossed it. “Where do you prefer?” The mocking undertone had become very slight, as if she was unable to completely shake it.

He retrieved his bedroll and placed it in the center of the room. He unrolled it and sat down.

She turned her back and started setting up her own roll when he cleared his throat.

She glanced. He held up a hand and drew his fingers towards him.

Saying nothing, she stood again and he thought he saw her sway. She must have thought he saw it too, because she smirked again, that promise of danger despite whatever he might think. She pulled off her robe.

He kept all his composure. Inwardly, however, he reacted very strongly.

The voluminous robe had made her seem much bigger than she actually was. A common shirt and blouse hung from her pale skin like decorations. Her breeches were cinched with a too-long belt and her head looked too big for her body. She was skeletally, painfully thin.

He knew they had become tied to the energy they wielded, but this?

He did not hint at how the sight of her sickened him or angered him. Instead, he made room for her on the cot and she joined him. He lay on his back and she placed her head on his shoulder.

“You have not told me your name,” she said. He was off-put for a moment. He was trying to marry the undernourished frame to the full, spirited voice that came out of it. “You know mine,” she said. “It seems only fair.”

“Ero’then.”

She said it to herself a few times. He imagined that she was trying to find the meaning in the old kaldorei tongue. He asked her how she knew it.

“My father was a mage, but he was also a scholar,” she said. “He knew many languages and was always teaching me. He thought it would serve me well in the future.”

“It seems he was a prophet.”

A bitter chuckle. “A poor one, then. He did not see his death.”

He asked her about the languages he had taught her. At first, her answers were short and in a tone of finality. But when he kept asking, she seemed to be drawn into conversation. She rolled over to look at him as they talked.

He was impressed. She was not exaggerating when she called her father a scholar. She spoke to him in Thalassian, then kaldorei, the common tongue of humans, a few troll dialects from the areas surrounding the human kingdoms of Lordaeron and Alterac, orcish, dwarven and gnomish. He didn’t know orcish, or any troll languages, but he did recognize them when he heard them. Then she started speaking in a very harsh, guttural inflection that he neither understood nor had heard before.

“What is _that_?”

She grinned wickedly. “You don’t know?” When he shook his head, she told him that it was Gutterspeak, a heavily bastardized version of the dialects of human Lordaeron. The undead who ruled those lands spoke it.

 _Forsaken_. Ero’then grimaced.

She seemed to enjoy his revulsion. “I taught it to myself,” she said. “It was useful back home.”

“How old was your father?”

She fell silent. At first he thought the question had been too personal. Then he realized that she was trying to give him an exact answer.

“Two thousand, four hundred and forty seven,” she said. “My mother was younger, though not by much.”

Ero’then nodded, but the answer disturbed him. His people did not keep track of age with such precision. They merely referred to a rough time period or event near when they had been born. The humans counted their lives by the passing of the seasons, for their hour of life was short. His people, however, did not count age in numbers. The thought that Karielle had known her father’s age to the very year left him astonished and not a little bit troubled.

What value was there in that? It bordered on the obsessive.

Still, he asked her age as well. He wasn’t surprised to hear it. She was barely an adult.

“And you, kaldorei? What is your age?”

He took a moment to answer. Karielle’s green-blue eyes studied him. He couldn’t have given an exact age if he had tried.

“I was young during the Sundering,” he eventually said.

He had not thought it possible to startle or surprise the girl, but her eyes went wide.

“You were there?” she said, her voice suddenly quieter. “During the _first_ invasion?”

“Yes.”

“And I thought my father was ancient,” she said. The smirk snuck back on to her face. “You fooled me. I thought you younger than that, old one.”

“Why?”

She snorted. It was not very pretty. “You’re here, for one thing,” she said. “And for a second, the way you treat the girl.”

“What do you mean?”

She laughed at him. “ _What do you mean?_ ” She mocked him with an echo. “You ride her like a trouble-maker. You’d like to ride her elseways. She looks like a sweet, innocent one. How long have you wanted her?”

She must have seen him chew out Sel’uen when she had asked if there was anything she could do for Drex. She hadn’t deserved everything he said, but she was the student who he needed to kick in the ass once and a while. She could be much better than she was.

He shifted positions so that he could lean over Karielle. “She is my charge and my student. Do you doubt my character, _sin’dorei_?”

She still had her smirk. But she said, “Of course not, old one,” she said. “You have a mate, then?”

He did not draw away from her. “I did,” he said.

The blood elf studied him. This close to her, he was more and more convinced that he could snap her fragile frame with a minimal application of force.

“What happened to her?” she asked.

“She grew sick. When we sacrificed Nordrassil to stop the demons, we sacrificed much more. She died.”

The blood elf looked like she wanted to ask more, but apparently she thought the better of it. Ero’then asked her, “Have you ever had a mate?”

“Nothing so formal,” she said. “But I’ve had lovers. One really good one. I thought about it wth him.”

“What happened?”

“I didn’t see the point. Didn’t you ever feel boxed in? Did you ever stray?”

Ero’then smiled at the girl. He didn’t think she was giving him bravado to compensate for her lying next to a man who had seen millennia come and go. She was pretty now in this far-off world without so much as a basin of water to freshen her; he could only imagine how she must have looked to her peers back in Quel’thalas. No, she had not wanted for lovers.

He said, “Karielle, there are lovers and then there are mates. Once you have known both, you will not confuse the two. You drink from a river and you can taste the river. But if you swim in the river, then you _experience_ the river. You _know_ the river. Believe me, young one, when I say that it is far better to swim in the river than to merely taste of it.”

“Well, you must have truly loved her,” she said smirking. “Do you miss her?”

Ero’then’s answer was a small shrug. “Love means something different after ten thousand years,” he said.

She eyed him. After a moment, her gaze fell to study the fabric of the bedroll. Though he watched her, now she couldn’t meet his eyes. She licked her chapped lips but didn’t speak. She was occupied with herself, and he let her mind wander, leaning back on the bedroll.

He had a good idea of the paths she was traveling. He waited patiently for her to come back.

When she did, her bravado returned with her. “He’s dead now, anyway,” she said, despite him not having been aware that they were still talking about her favorite lover. “Alongside my father and mother. Sacrificed on the altar of the Scourge.”

She was working herself back into a mood. Ero’then frowned as he felt a similar mood enter his blood.

“You know why they came for your people.”

Her eyes shot back to his. They were blazing and ready for a fight. “You have no _right_ ,” she said, “to condemn me, or any of my people. We left of our own will. We accepted your “exile”, despite how you benefited from our power.”

“Benefited?” he echoed the word. “What _benefits_ have we reaped from your experimentation? Your foolish lust for power? You brought the Legion to the world with your pride! They hunt you even here!” he pointed to the tent flap.

“It was only through us that the world was saved,” Karielle shot back. “When we realized what Queen Azshara had done, we fought back as well. We’ve fought the Legion at every turn. We are its oldest enemy, _and_ the one it fears the most.” She pointed, mimicking his indication towards the clusters of dead demons outside. “We can face the Legion on its own terms. It is our mastery that can protect this world.”

“Your _mastery_? _Your_ contribution to the war was to sink half the world. It was through your Sunwell and your Dalaran that the Legion returned! And where were you when our forests burned? Where was your prince when they came to Hyjal?It was _our_ sacrifice that bought us a future. _Real_ sacrifice. Malfurion saved us all, including your people _._ And how do you thank us, now that we have cleaned up your mess? You rut like donkeys in a heat, chasing after more magic, _more_ power.”

They had both found their way to their knees. Their whispers were shouts.

“You know nothing of our struggles,” Karielle hissed. “You are blind, coddled, and ignorant, hiding in your forests, deaf to the ways of this world. Malfurion wouldn’t know his head from his ass if he walked out of the woods. And now I hear he’s lost himself in his dreams? You think _that_ is leadership?”

“How _dare_ you.” He was leaning over her again, dwarfing her small frame. Yet again she did not budge. “Malfurion Stormrage _saved_ us. Your people have taught you no respect at all.”

“I respect what is deserving of respect. That does not include an upstart druid who imprisoned his own brother for saving the world’s only hope at fighting the Legion. Illidan gave his life to stopping the demons.”

“Sold his soul, you mean. Betrayed us all.”

“Are you _joking_?” Karielle laughed. It was a harsh, cruel laugh. “Illidan gained the power he needed to stop the Legion. He did this not once but _twice_. And both times, your precious Malfurion was too short-sighted to see that his brother was doing what had to be done. For all our sakes.”

“You are young, child, so I will forgive you these outbursts. You don’t understand what you speak. You’re only reciting what your elders have taught you. I cannot fault you for that.”

She leapt at him, one arm raised. By instinct he grabbed her wrist and prepared to twist it, but he realized she was not readying a spell. She was shoving her hand in his face. She wanted him to see something.

“Don’t speak to me of _youth_ , old one. I’ve lived my words. Fault me for this.”

Her palm was open. There was an ugly scar in its center, and it ran deep. She shoved the other palm in his face too. It had a similar marking.

“You were there in the first war with the demons?” she said. “Well, I might not have seen that war, but I’ve been in one with demons too. I wasn’t in Dalaran. I was visiting my parents in Silvermoon when they came. We all joined the fight, but Arthas was too strong. My parents fell and I fled deep into the city. I found an old wine cellar and hid myself. I hoped to wait out the storm. I thought that Anasterian would rally our forces in Quel’Danas and throw back the undead, so I waited. But I didn’t know that they had taken the Sunwell. The days grew longer and the Scourge did not leave. They eventually found me. I fought them with all I had. I gave them my special brand of hellfire. But they kept coming. When I was spent they dragged me out of the cellar. They were human magic-users—covered in tattoos and fawned over by cavorting corpses. They were Cult of the Damned. Many were looting the city—looking for prizes.”

“They had their fun with me. I thought they were just going to kill and raise me, but they didn’t. They dragged me to a few houses first, looking for wood. Eventually they found one, and they nailed me to it. Both my hands and both my feet. They would come and go, and others would come by too. It went on for days. But don’t think I was the only one—you could always hear others in the city… _screaming_. There were days I thought I had it lucky.”

Ero’then had taken her hands. The air was only growing colder and more turbulent, but she sweat furiously now. She sweat through everything. She talked directly to him, looking in his eyes, but hers were glazed.

When she fell quiet for a long time, Ero’then asked her how she had escaped.

She said she hadn’t. It was the living who had been tormenting her, and the living slept. During the night, she started experimenting.

“I started feeling it a few nights in,” she said. “I didn’t know that it was because of what Arthas did to the Sunwell at the time. I thought it was just the pain.”

Slowly but surely, she had begun to draw arcane energy to her. Without the Sunwell, it should have been much harder, but the dark energy that held the army of the Scourge together was thick in the air. Whenever a patrol would walk by, or someone would entertain themselves with her, she would steal bits and pieces.

“Not enough for them to realize,” she said. “I barely used any of it. When I did use it, it was just to keep me buoyant. I couldn’t lift myself up to breathe anymore, so I had to use some spells to get air in my lungs.”

Finally, the Scourge presence had lessened and lessened. Arthas had taken the army south. A cultist had come to finish her off.

“He got an unpleasant surprise,” she said.

Afterwards, she had survived by hiding in the ruins and hoarding arcane energy. She even managed to cage a banshee early on. She was able to draw energy from it for days, though she said the power had made her feel sick. Like she had consumed something diseased.

But it worked. Finally, when Kael’thas returned and gathered the survivors, she crawled out of the wreckage with the others. Many had worse stories than hers. Kael’thas renamed their people there.

“We didn’t understand the magnitude of it then,” she said. “We were just glad to be alive. It was if only after we started exploring the ruins together that we saw all the bodies. We were a decimated people. Thousands. Thrown into meat wagons and dragged onto piles. Too much for even Arthar to raise all at once, it seemed. Prince Kael’thas was right. We were sin’dorei now.

“There’s no going back to the way things were. Never.”

Ero’then was silent. Karielle had exhausted herself with her story, and her hands were limp in his. Her scarred child’s hands.

He said, “And even after all that, you won’t give it up?”

Her head rose and her teeth were clenched there. She tried to rip back her hands, but he wouldn’t let her. After a moment, she stopped trying and shouted at him at full volume: “How can you even _ask_ that?” The green in her eyes swirled in sickening circles. “You want me to walk the world without it? _Defenseless_?”

“They’ll keep coming for you. First it was the Well. Then it was Quel’Thalas. They’ll come again. And one day the price will be too high.”

The look she gave him was one filled with absolute disgust. “Yeah?” she said. “Well you know what? You can go fuck yourself, old one.”


	13. Chapter 13

The conversation ended there. Karielle didn’t speak again, so Ero’then left her alone and she was soon sleep. He did the same soon after.

He woke a couple times, and found her scrunched up next to him. Her skin was freezing—so cold she made him cold—to the touch. He curled himself around her.

When he woke again, feeling more refreshed, he extricated himself from her. She slept like a stone, but certainly didn’t sound like one. He wondered if it was her snoring that had woken him.

He cut across camp to check on Drex. He entered the tent silently and found Sel’uen spooning her blood elf. It seemed to have been a trend. He found himself hoping that the girl had done a little more than spooning with the sin’dorei. He would take anything that would grow her up.

Without waking them, he looked over Drex. He didn’t like what he saw. The goblin had grown even yellower and lines of dark mucus had begun to run down his lips and cheeks.

He repositioned the goblin to keep him from choking on his own fluids. He rechecked his bandages and did everything he could think of, and even some things he had never tried. In the end, though, nothing helped and he simply laid his hand on his guide’s head.

“I made you a promise Master Drex,” he said in a whisper that carried through the stale air of the tent. “I intend to keep it.”

He left, sparing two last glances. One for Drex. One for Sel’uen.

 

***

 

There was nothing to do but wait. Students woke periodically and sometimes wandered to his tent, asking about Drex. He gave them all the same news. When Sel’uen came, she looked worried. She couldn’t help trying to peek past him, to where Karielle slept on his bedroll.

They’d all done it, but Ero’then decided to pick on her. “What is it?”

Her eyes shot to him. “Nothing, Shan’do,” she said quickly.

“You were looking to see if the blood elf and I were sharing a bed.”

She blushed heavily, but seemed to find no reason to deny it. “…yes, Shan’do.” Then she surprised him. “They’re very cold, aren’t they?” She gave him that look like she was hoping she hadn’t erred.

He smiled, and he realized he was a bit sad. “Yes, Sel’uen,” he said. “Yes they are.”

 

***

 

On the second night after the battle, a blood elf woke him. Her eyes were bulging, and her mouth was half-open in panic.

“ _What?_ ” she shouted at him. Her eyes were glassy.

“ _What?_ ” Ero’then yelled back, afraid. Where was he? Who was this?

“You were screaming,” Karielle said. Yes, that was her name. “What was it? What did you dream?”

The pieces fell back into place, as they always did. The tent. The howling wind. The uncomfortable, alien earth.

“Nothing,” he assured her. “I am sorry I woke you, Karielle. Go back to sleep.”

She looked almost scared to. But she did.

 

***

 

The next time she woke him, she didn’t mean to.

At first, Ero’then thought that the cold wind had snuck through the tent flap and was tickling him. He muttered and grumbled, trying to cover himself. It took him a moment, but then he realized that he _was_ covered.

He shot to his knees and whirled. Karielle fell back on her rump, her eyes wide, blazing with unnatural green fire. She looked as shocked as he felt. She was trying to mutter out some sort of explanation, some excuse.

He lunged and seized her throat. She cried out, then gargled as he easily closed her windpipe. It was like crushing a winter-stiff oak leaf.

He swung her around and slammed her into the earth. Her bizarre, burning eyes rolled in their sockets. She moaned, or tried to. She was communicating in gurgles only.

Now her hands started to glow. Fire danced on her fingertips.

He hit her once, hard, with an open palm. The fire vanished. Her pale face began to turn noticeably purple, so he released his hold on her throat. She wheezed like a dying animal, then cried out when he hit her again. She rolled onto her side but he dragged her back to her back. He straddled her, his knee cutting into her ribs. He hit her twice more.

“Please _…_ ” she held her scarred hands out to him, a feeble defense. With her face red and now bruising, and the sickness of her eyes, she did not even look like an elf. “ _Please_ …”

He lowered his hands. He let her lie there, coughing, wheezing and sobbing. Apologizing. He pressed his knee deeper into her ribcage.

“If I wake up,” he promised her, “with one less student, then you will wish you were back in Silvermoon.”

As the tears streaked down her once-pretty, now bruising visage, Karielle’s face did something bizarre. It grinned, and it grinned widely. Her eyes burned like miniature fel suns, so bright it was as if they were trying to burn holes in his flesh. Ero’then didn’t like it, so he closed a hand on her throat again. The grin vanished.

“Of course,” she croaked. “I’m sorry old one. I don’t know what came over me. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

Neither of them slept for a long time. Ero’then lay on his back. His arm was bent towards him, and Karielle’s neck rested in the crook of his elbow.

 


	14. Chapter 14

The next day Drex was dead.

Ero’then discovered him in the morning (was it ever morning here?). He woke everyone.

Despite the fears that Karielle’s withdrawals had placed in him, the night seemed to have been uneventful for his students. Well, all except one. Sel’uen had an ugly black eye.

Away from the others, he demanded to know what had happened. He imagined her blood elf’s expression just before he threw him out into the storm.

But Sel’uen looked angry that he had asked. “It’s nothing,” she growled like a wolf. “I’m fine. I handled it.”

He was too surprised by her response to press her. The blood elf she had shared a tent with didn’t look hurt, but he did look cowed. He decided to let the matter be.

He gathered all the elves together and explained what they would do with Drex. They all nodded. Preparations began and everyone helped, dragging the demon corpses to the center of their camp. He had his students broke down their tents again. Some gave him strange looks, but didn’t ask. They were probably hoping that he knew the way back to civilization.

He didn’t.

As the elves worked side-by-side, Ero’then took note of how they interacted. The work was done mostly by the sound of the storm, and those who had shared a tent seemed to gravitate to one another. Even Sel’uen and her companion worked side-by-side. Many curious glances were exchanged. He also noted the guarded looks the blood elves threw Karielle. Her bruises had ripened, giving her face a splotchy look, much worse than Sel’uen’s. Karielle did her best to ignore the stares.

Eventually, the work was done. The demons had been gathered together in a mound of flesh and fel jewelry. At its top lay Drex, his hands folded across his chest, his eyes closed and face cleaned. The sin’dorei and the kaldorei rested and shared rations. To the night elves, they tasted healthy but bland.

Once Ero’then felt that everyone had had an appropriate time of rest, he stood. He gestured for everyone else to stand as well, and they faced the mound of the dead. He indicated for Karielle to join him, which she did.

“We say goodbye to a friend we knew not long,” Ero’then announced. “Who was known for his wit, his wisdom,” he glanced pointedly at Renarion, and some of the students smiled, “and his bravery. He has left us far too soon. May you find glades greener than these Master Drex.

“We also say goodbye to a friend we knew longer. Brim Leafwind, our companion and our cook of immeasurable talent. The storm has claimed your body, my student, but I trust your spirit can find its way home, even here. We have missed you already.”

He hung his head, letting silence fall. The students mimicked him, and then the blood elves did as well. A new tension had filled the air. Remembering their comrade made them remember how he had been taken from them.

“We say goodbye,” Ero’then spoke again. “And as we say goodbye, we also remember.” Everyone raised their heads. Ero’then turned to Karielle and asked, “The honor is yours, sin’dorei,” he said.

A ghost of a smile touched her fat lips. Still, she did it graciously. Thin tendrils of flame circled her hands and she approached the mound, lighting it. Ero’then had little idea of how flammable demons actually were, but Karielle’s fire ate at them with sure hunger. A sickly sweet smell filled the air. The elves watched the flames climb and climb all the way to Drex. The flames rose and fell, indifferent to their purpose.

Karielle started to sing. At first, it was just her, and Ero’then was caught by her voice. Like the scent of the flames, it filled the air, surrounding them as much as the storm did. Then the other sin’dorei joined in. Most were just as good as her, if not better. Those with poor voices sang in a whisper. They were harmonic. They had done this before.

Ero’then closed his eyes. It was a dirge song, one that tickled his far-memory. It had changed in wording and tune over the millennia, but he recognized its heart. It was a mourning song that was reserved for Highborne funerals, back when the Highborne had been the nobles who ruled all the kaldorei empire. It was easily modified in tempo and wording in the convergence on its subject; in the song, the singers would substitute the missing stanzas with the name of the deceased.

They sang now of Brim Leafwind. Then, without ceasing, they continued into a second dirge. This one was about Drex.

It felt like hours passed, but when the blood elves finished, Ero’then found himself wishing there had been more. He looked to his side and saw that Karielle now hung her head. Her hair rustled in her face, hiding her bruises.

“Thank you,” he said. His students looked moved as well, even though they had understood few of the words. “Now, Karielle Sunstrike.”

She glanced at him. The color of her bruises mirrored the hue of the storm. She had known what he planned to do. Now he had no choice.

“Lead us to your paradise,” he said.


	15. Chapter 15

The Shan’do and the Highborne’s leader—Karielle, she reminded herself—led the group from the front. The students took up the rear, with the blood elves between them. They left the mound still burning, and Sel’uen watched as the storm swallowed it up behind them.

The bubble followed them, as it always did. The wind and the amount of debris whistling through the air seemed to have picked up in intensity and size. They were traveling deeper into the storm. When she looked up into the violet wall of air that surrounded her on all sides, she was constantly surprised by how un-claustrophobic she felt. Perhaps it was simply the nature of the bubble and the calming effect it had on the air, but she felt perfectly—foolishly—safe, despite the fact that if they wanted to get out of this storm that was capable of picking her up and tearing her to pieces that they would have to travel days to get out of it, she was not perturbed.

She had other things on her mind. She watched the back of Aethellion.

The first night she had satisfied her curiosity. At first, the blood elf hadn’t wanted to share anything with her, but her incessant nagging—yes, she had nagged him mercilessly—she had gotten him talking. And once he started, it was difficult for him to stop.

She learned a great deal that first night. She was still processing much of it, especially the bits about the Sunwell and the result of its destruction, causing their green eyes and their magical addiction. It all fascinated her, and she had spent most of the night interrogating Aethellion.

He had even asked limited questions about her, and her homeland. He seemed disdainful of her druidism, but that only made her want to change his mind about it. She hadn’t been very successful. He had only seemed interested when she mentioned how she could shape-shift.

“You mean to tell me,” he had said. He had a very cultured speech. “That you have the ability to change your form into an animal’s? Any animal you wish?”

She’d shrugged. It was more than that, and she’d tried to convey that to him. She didn’t just take the _shape_ of the animals, she actually _became_ the animal, at least in part. Much of her training had been focused around being able to remind herself when she was in another form that she was still, in actuality, a night elf. There were radical groups of druids who embraced the animals they shape-shifted into, to the point of totally _becoming_ that animal and leaving their night elven lives behind. She told him how the cornerstone of her training had been on teaching her how to adopt an animal’s skins and ability, not only to use them in desperate circumstances, but also to understand the nature of the animal more, without being consumed by it.

“Besides,” she’d said. “It’s not _any_ animal I want. Each form is different, and requires extensive training. Then, after a great deal of practice, I can shape-shift.”

“You can do this at will?”

“More or less, yes.”

“What forms can you take on?”

“Not many. I’ve mastered only a couple. The saber cat is one I use a lot.” She blushed. “I can also do a squirrel.”

“A squirrel?” He looked perplexed. “That hardly seems useful.”

“It’s not all about usefulness,” she told him. “I like squirrels. I like seeing the world through their eyes.”

Eventually, they had both become too tired to continue talking. Somehow, they had ended up sharing a bed. She’d been astonished at how frigid his skin was. It was as if he was a corpse. She had noticed he looked like he was suffering a bit from malnutrition, but not much. She guessed rightly that it was the magical hunger.

She’d curled up next to him, and tried to warm him with her own body. The move had woken him, and he’d rolled over to face her, his eyes glimmering that strange fire in the gloom of the tent.

Sel’uen had never made love before. When it was over, she lay on her back, her head on Aethellion’s chest. She contemplated some of her Shan’do’s metaphors then, in the quiet, rustling of the tent. And as she thought of her Shan’do’s many lessons over this adventure, she realized she saw some of what he meant. She doodled with her finger on Aethellion’s bare side, tracing the lengths of his ribs, and wondered at what it would be like to have a mate. She tried to imagine something greater than a lover and couldn’t. She found herself wondering about one day returning to Teldrassil and looking for a mate. Could it be that other males had been interested in her, but in her innocence she had driven them away? She imagined her return home, and smiled.

Innocent no more.

Eventually, she had started giggling. If Aethellion had been asleep, he woke up. He nudged her and she glanced at him, and it only made her giggle more.

“What is it?” he demanded.

She just shook her head and pointed. Aethellion followed her indication.

“I forgot he was here,” she said. She thought of Drex, semi-conscious, unable to speak, but perfectly able to hear them from only a few yards away, and she devolved into an uncontrollable fit of giggles.

She’d visited the Shan’do when she’d awoken next. The walk over to his tent had evaporated the magic of the night, and thick shame started to settle on her shoulders.

She had just _slept_ with a blood elf! Their enemies! She should have been guarding him, not snuggling him. She felt like a traitor until she caught a glimpse of the female curled up in the Shan’do’s bedroll.

The shame wasn’t totally gone when she picked her way back to her tent. But it was lessened.

She looked forward to the second night, and wasn’t disappointed. They shared more of themselves with each other. She learned that Aethellion had been, like her, one child out of many. The difference between them was that all but one of his sisters had not survived the Scourge.

The stories he told her had made her feel sick, and when she thought about her idyllic childhood in Teldrassil, she also felt guilty. To think that she had been blessed with such fortune when her own kin half a world away were suffering atrocities like this… She could see the darkness in Aethellion’s diseased eyes as he told her stories, and of how he had joined Karielle’s expedition to find Kael’thas’s promised land for his people. He talked about how humanity had betrayed them, and how even Dalaran had turned them away. His speech was black and increasing in rage, and eventually Sel’uen had heard enough. She took him to bed again, and the waking nightmares had faded into the stale air.

When she woke, she found him straddling her. Groggy, she had smiled, thinking the obvious. But then she felt the cold, and the strange exhaustion sweeping over her. She fought the malaise, and realized he had her pinned. His eyes were blazing.

She cried out his name, but he hadn’t seemed to have heard her. Panicking, she fought back. She did not consider herself very strong, but Aethellion’s frame had about as much muscle as a sloth’s. She wrestled him, and received a couple hits in the tussle, which must have been where she got the black eye. She tried to not to lash out at him, afraid she would seriously hurt him if she did. His skin felt like pale film over bones.

She was able to pin him. He cursed her in spits and and hisses, flailing like a caught snake, trying to wriggle out from under her. He had looked blurry through her tears. She begged him to stop, but he kept fighting hopelessly and pointlessly. She felt like it was hours before he finally ceased, exhausted.

She remembered giving him consequences. She remembered threatening him. He hadn’t answered her, except in vile looks. She, too, soon stopped speaking.

Now he walked straight and proud - as all the sin’dorei seemed to - and didn’t look back. But if he had, he would have seen her watching him. She kept an eye on him because she felt responsible for him. Her tears were dry. She doubted he would try anything now, but if something needed to be done, she would be the one to do it. She would be ready. There was no logic in it. She just knew it had to be her.

The day passed mostly in silence. They only stopped when Ero’then called for it. Karielle was leading them without hesitation. Sel’uen wondered how she knew where to go. More so, she wondered _where_ they were going.

Paradise. She thought of Aethellion’s flailing and Karielle’s bruised and battered face. She didn’t think she wanted to visit what these people thought of as paradise. Her imagination along those lines was enough to trouble her.

She almost gasped out loud.

 _That_ was why they had chased the Highborne - or blood elves - across the world. She looked to Ero’then, who stomped alongside Karielle, his gaze fixed straight ahead, straying only to keep an eye on his blood elf. They hadn’t chased them to kill a bunch of helpless pilgrims - though they had already seen how the blood elves were far from helpless. The Shan’do had chased them out of curiosity, or, worse, a sense of duty. Brim hadn’t died needlessly.

This had been the plan all along. To find the pilgrims’ “paradise.”

Knowing their purpose, she felt her feet fall easier and the pack on her back grow lighter. Sel’uen knew now what the blood elves were. The stories she had been told as she grew up were not fanciful, vindictive fables. The Highborne really were dangerous. Their tampering with powers they didn’t understand had been catastrophic. The magic-starved blood elves were now proof of that. Thinking of the animalistic behavior of Aethellion, Sel’uen wondered if even a wildkin would have behaved with such single-minded madness.

No, they wouldn’t have. Wildkin had become the natural beasts of the world. Blood elves were no natural beasts; they were twisted, helpless slaves to their hunger, unnatural parasites that fed on the world around them. Sel’uen gritted her teeth.

Her Shan’do had been right in this chase. She had been a fool to doubt him. The Highborne had to be stopped. For their own good and Azeroth’s.


	16. Chapter 16

They only had to share tents once more. Renarion had offered to take on Aethellion in his own tent, even though he already had two blood elves of his own to look after. Sel’uen hadn’t been able to decipher what had happened in _his_ tent over the past few days, though he seemed to have it well in hand.

She knew it was because of her black eye that he offered. Renarion seemed more upset about it than even the Shan’do.

She talked him out of his masculine protectiveness. She told him that she could handle herself, just as she had before. He eventually relented, though he didn’t look happy about it.

She was more anxious about spending another night with Aethellion than she let on. They shared a bed again, though that was only because she was uncomfortable with not knowing where he was. As it was, sleep didn’t come easily. They barely spoke.

It was early the next day when the storm abruptly thinned, then began to clear. Sel’uen almost stumbled in surprise as the winds began to clear and the violent, swirling fog dissipated before their very eyes. Then the way opened up and she gasped, her heart leaping.

The clearing was _huge_. It was bigger by far than the battlefield the blood elves had chosen. The land was mostly flat, but there was a portion of it that was sloped. Centered at the top of these slopes was a gigantic complex.

That was the word that fit it. Sel’uen had seen many things and exotic places on her journeys with the Shan’do, but the building before her was hugeand sprawling, and seemed to be sectioned off into wings. What looked like mechanical tubing as thick as a full-grown bear criss-crossed the open ground and wound into and around the structure. There were pathways that appeared to have been carved out of the landscape, with sturdy-looking fences lining them. Sel’uen’s gaze followed the structure up and further up still. Pristine spires and rises jutted into the sky until their bizarre-shaped tops reached their zenith. There the clouds from the storm circled tips of the spires like the nuclei of a whirlpool.

Populating the grounds were blood elves. They were everywhere. Some looked like soldiers, outfitted with blood-red and black tabards and armored with scarlet armor. Others looked like gnomish mechanics with goggles and engineering tools hanging from their belts, going from place to place checking the tubes and other paraphernalia the functions of which Sel’uen could only guess. They looked busy as could be, even rushing from place to place. She thought of Dolanaar and the ants at the base of her tree.

A small troop of blood elves approached them. They were carrying crossbows, though there were a few blood knights on the flanks. Sel’uen was struck by how well organized and well-disciplined they appeared. They were led by an important-looking mage with a staff taller than he was. Flanking him were two others. The one on his left was a finely-dressed, bored-looking male without a weapon or staff. The one on his right she immediately picked out for an engineer of some sort, probably the head of the operation.

The blood elves stopped just before Ero’then and Karielle. The Shan’do had stopped moving, so everyone else had as well. They had waited for the blood elves’ approach, their necks craning to take in the sight. Even the Highborne they’d brought with them looked baffled at what they saw.

Was this not what they had expected? Sel’uen was hardly one to judge. Out of all her imaginations of “paradise,” this reality hadn’t been one of them.

The blood elf who looked like a mage greeted them in Thalassian. Karielle responded. The two talked until Ero’then cut in. He was also speaking Thalassian. He drew a glare from both mages.

The mage with the tall staff called an order. Karielle waved to accentuate it, and the blood elven pilgrims gave one last look to their night elven captors and filed in behind their leader.

“Can you speak the old tongue?” Ero’then was asking now. He didn’t look phased by anything that had occurred so far. “My students would benefit from hearing.”

The mage regarded him. “Some,” he said. “These are your students?”

“I am Ero’then,” he said. “Shan’do to these young ones.”

“I am Archmage Oltharin,” the blood elf said. “Servant to the Sun King. This is our Chief Mechanician Astranasor and the honorable Ambassador Kaladen.” No one bowed. Sel’uen wondered if they would have been better off fleeing back the way they’d come.

_But then what? Wander the storm until we starve?_

The archmage spoke again. “You are a far ways from the Moonglade, Shan’do,” he was saying. “What business has brought you so far as this? And why have you taken hostage these pilgrims without provocation?”

Sel’uen saw her Shan’do smirk. “Curiosity,” he said. “And, now that I’ve assuaged that, enlightenment.”

“Enlightenment?” the archmage said.

“Yes. Enlightenment for these desperate and innocent souls before it is too late.” Sel’uen stared at him. It seemed everyone was.

What was he talking about?

The archmage was just shaking his head. “You are enemies of our prince; you have treated his people with barbaric contempt,” he said in a monotone. “Hardly surprising for your savage people.” He indicated to one of the guards. “Take them to the cells. One druid to a cell, you understand?”

The blood elves moved forward. Sel’uen felt a growl building in her throat. She tensed to transform into her saber cat form. But the Shan’do shot a look at his students, and its meaning was clear. A fight here would be foolish.

A blood elf took her arm, and she looked at him. His face was hard and his grip was harder. The glow in his eyes was there, but dull.

These blood elves were healthy. Very healthy. She couldn’t have shaken his grip if she had tried.

No, there was no fight here. She let the blood elf lead her alongside the other students. Ero’then was looking at Karielle.

“Open your eyes, young one,” he said. “You are not like your prince. Do not let your hunger blind you.”

In response, Karielle gave him a smile. Sel’uen’s blood ran cold at the sight of it. The mage walked towards him, like she was going to say something.

She slapped him. It turned the Shan’do’s head. It might have been comical, if it weren’t for that smile. It hung like a twisted ornament on her black and blue face. It was filled with far more promises than just a slap. She spoke to him in Thalassian - threats, probably - but Ero’then didn’t respond. She kept at it, her voice turning to wild shouts until the archmage’s expression turned annoyed, and ordered them again to be taken away.

“Once they are secure,” he said to Karielle. “We will speak.”

They were led inside and the dried earth turned to a cold, metallic floor. The tubes that ran like blood vessels throughout the place hung on the walls and the ceilings. Sel’uen blinked. Was something moving within them? She hadn’t thought so, when she’d been outside. But now it looked like they were transporting something, some sort of gas. Were they siphoning the storm clouds?

No, not the clouds. She saw it with more clarity as they moved throughout the complex. A purplish gas - punctuated by some form of lightning! she saw - was traveling through the tubes, looking like it was moving towards the center of the complex. They were near that - one building over actually. However, they were being brought down a level, to what turned out to be an extensive underground chamber. Big cells punctuated the cordoned off rooms, which slid open and shut by magic with their passing.

Sel’uen hardly paid attention as her companions were locked away in separate rooms, behind heavy, runed bars. She was busy following her own conclusions.

Was _this_ their paradise? It didn’t seem so, at least from the mages’ reactions. They looked as surprised as she had been. Even Karielle, who acted with such arrogant confidence, had seemed lost staring at the spires. And yet the archmage had acted like he knew they had been coming. Well, in retrospect it actually was obvious that he would have known they were coming. An archmage surely made regular use of scrying to protect his facility. But he had known they were pilgrims.

 _Once they are secure, we will speak_. What did that mean?

She was pushed into a cell. It was smaller than the ones she’d seen, and she made the effort to growl at the blood elves as she was locked in. She was left with one guard, who she glared at, seeing if she could get a response. When she didn’t, she took a seat on the cool metal wall and returned to her thoughts.

This wasn’t the paradise the pilgrims had expected. Maybe it was further on. Maybe it _was_ as great as they believed it was but this place wasn’t it.

 _I’m here to enlighten them_. The Shan’do was convinced that the pilgrims had been duped in some way. In fact, this whole facility screamed to her that something was wrong. It must have been drawing on the energy of the storm…

_Servant of the Sun King._

Sel’uen stared ahead, at the bars. Aethellion’s words came back to her.

Kael’thas had promised his people a cure. He had first gone to Dalaran but had been turned away. The naga, allied with Illidan Stormrage, had then offered to have his people join them—an offer he accepted. Aethellion had said Illidan promised the Sun King a cure for his people. Had the Betrayer ever delivered?

Was this place a fulfillment of that promise? They were close to the Nether here, as the Shan’do had said. The Twisting Nether itself, she had been taught, was the realm of magic where demons lived and all arcane energy came from. Could it be that Kael’thas had set up here to draw on the magical energies of the nearby Nether? That’s what this place seemed to be. A gigantic mana siphoning battery.

But that couldn’t be it either. Spells wrought on this scale, for that purpose… this place would be _crawling_ with demons. This place had to have another purpose. But for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what.

Her wondering was exhausting her, but it killed her not knowing what was going on. Her Shan’do obviously knew. He had brought them here for a purpose. What was that purpose?

She fell asleep wondering.

 


	17. Chapter 17

She awoke to the thundering of the storm.

It was so loud she could feel the reverberations of the roaring through the metallic floor. She was on her side, slumped against the wall, her cheek to the floor. She had drooled a bit. Her mouth felt arid.

A bit disgusted with herself, she sat up and wiped the dribble off her face. She looked for her pack. The blood elves had taken it, but now it was against the wall beside her. She looked through it. They’d gutted everything but her food and canteen. She took conservative sips. Once she was finished, she sat and listened to the storm.

Its intensity seemed to have reached a fevered pitch. At this point, she was starting to wonder if it was sentient. It sounded angry, _enraged_ even. Coming in, she hadn’t seen any obvious signs of magic being used to keep back the fury of the storm from the facility, but then she was hardly an expert on arcane usage. With an archmage running the facility, the blood elves could afford to be creative. Listening to the howling, the lashing of the wind outside, the crashing of thunder and the echoes of building-sized debris crashing into one another high, high above them, she felt like the fury of the storm was not aimless but directed at this one nexus. It was as if whatever leeching this facility was doing to the storm had caused it to rage against it in retaliation, trying to get at its denizens.

But the facility stood strong. She could not see further than the few meters down the hallway beyond her cage, but there was no creaking, no moaning of structural fragility. Either the place itself had been built strong enough to handle this most terrible maelstrom or the spells were well-wrought enough to hold it back. Either way, she didn’t feel like she was in danger. Well, not from the storm at least.

She forced herself up and stepped to the bars. She looked down the hallway and saw multiple other cells. However, the ones she saw were all empty. Their captors didn’t want them communicating with each other. She ran her hands along the bars, testing their strength. She thought she recognized its hardened build, and thought back to Honor Hold, when she’d amused herself by watching the blacksmiths work. Adamantium.

There was the one guard on duty, and she was surprised to find him slumped asleep on the wall, much as she had been. She smiled.

What did the blood elves plan to do with them? She couldn’t think of anything good. They were far from any Horde or Alliance outposts, though even then she wondered what allegiance this place held to. The archmage had said he was a servant of the Sun King, Kael’thas Sunstrider. It was all very complicated and she had to admit to herself that she had not paid as much attention to the Shan’do’s lessons in politics as she should have, but her limited understanding told her that Kael’thas was allied with the Betrayer and his Illidari army. Yet the Shan’do had also told them once that the blood elves on Azeroth swore fealty to a regent who had formed an alliance with the Horde. She frowned again. To think that after all the Horde had done to the elves - Highborne and kaldorei alike - that Quel’thalas would even consider a partnership with them… it was too bizarre to even consider.

She watched the sleeping form of her guard. He was mumbling. Troubled in his dreams.

But if this place owed its allegiance to the Horde, she would have felt a little bit safer. Despite the hostilities between the two powers, neither the Alliance nor the Horde were known for cruelties to their captives, and she’d even witnessed a prisoner exchange back in Honor Hold. But if the archmage - who was the obvious master of the facility - was beholden to Kael’thas, who was beholden to Illidan…

She also couldn’t shake the feeling that they had stumbled on a powerful secret here. With the fact that the mages hadn’t divulged details on their desired “promised land” and her Shan’do’s declared desire to “enlighten” the blood elves left her feeling like they were unwelcome guests in a place that Kael’thas’s forces didn’t want the rest of Outland to know existed. And if that was the case, she didn’t like their odds of surviving captivity.

She kept coming back to her Shan’do. He might not have known everything, but he knew pretty damn close to everything. He hadn’t looked particularly worried when they’d walked in on this place. She wanted to know why. She needed to see him.

She retreated from the bars and took a seat, crossing her legs and falling into her meditation. The howling of the storm softened into the gentle breeze of Dolanaar.

She had seen her Shan’do accomplish incredible things without any meditation at all, but she was no Shan’do. Meditation helped her focus herself on her tasks, even the simple ones. So it did now.

She reached out around her, felt her own life spirit, then acknowledged the sleeping guard. Something in him caused her to pause. His dreams _were_ troubled. Very troubled. She thought to assuaged him, but then decided against it. She did want to waste her energy.

She wandered down a few hallways and discovered Xallon and Renarion before she found her Shan’do. He was a bit of a beacon, his life-force burning with great strength and clarity. Noting where he was, she returned to herself and focused again on Dolanaar.

The gentle breeze. The sound of the wildlife, the birds, the fawns sprinting through the underbrush. The soft, never-ending twilight that blanketed the boughs of the world tree. She considered her own tree, felt its resilient bark, noted the imperial ants, noted the familial squirrels. When she opened her eyes, the world was bigger, and she felt lighter. The fury of the storm was louder and more than a bit scarier.

With only a moment’s hesitation, the squirrel scampered through the bars and down the hallway.

 

She found her Shan’do meditating in his cell. He had a guard as well—who was also asleep, snoring with intermittent violence.

She slipped through the bars and stared up at her Shan’do. He looked like a serene titan, perfectly focused. He hadn’t seemed to have noticed her, so she changed back into a night elf as soundlessly as she could. She didn’t want to break his concentration.

She folded her knees and waited. What was he doing? Perhaps it was nothing at all. Was this what druids did when they were further enough along? Would she one day become so wise that she simply wanted to meditate for meditation’s sake?

She took to watching the blood elf guard who snored obnoxiously. She began wondering with not a little anxiety what he would do when he saw her in here. She hadn’t planned to deal with him on her way up here; she had been thinking that when Ero’then saw her, he would have dealt with him. It turned out that there hadn’t been any need, but now she was anxious to speak with her Shan’do before he awoke and discovered her.

“Hello young one. It seems those who ridiculed you for your choice of a form are the ones who are now stuck behind bars.”

She looked at him. He hadn’t moved and his eyes were still closed, but she thought she saw the hint of a smile.

That had been another thing. She had been afraid to provoke his temper. “Yes, Shan’do,” she said. “I hope I haven’t done wrong to join you here.”

“That would depend on _why_ you have joined me, Sel’uen. I imagine you have a question.”

“Some,” she said. She spilled her mind to him. When she was finished, he still hadn’t moved. She had realized he hadn’t stopped out of necessity. He needed to keep meditating. His silence caused her to hesitate, but when she did he would nod as if to show he hadn’t abandoned her.

“Why have we come here, Shan’do?” she finally asked. “What is the purpose of this adventure? What are we to do now?”

“When you ask a question,” he said, “ask it once, and in only one way. Otherwise you will get a confused answer.”

When he didn’t continue, she bit her lip. “Why have you brought us here, Shan’do?” she asked.

In lieu of an immediate answer, a huge _boom_ echoed from outside. It wasn’t anything on the facility. It had been the collision of two huge boulders in the sky. The sound echoed through the facility, ricocheting off the metal over and over again, growing softer and yet more menacing each time.

“I came to regret telling the elders that I was leaving,” he said, eyes still closed. “I should have left without telling them. When I did, they insisted I bring students. That I not “waste” my time wandering the world. They thought it would do young ones good to see the world beyond the woods.” A darker smile. “They said it would do them good to fear it as well.”

“We could have stayed in Honor Hold with Bern and the Red Sons.” That was the name of the Alliance guild that Ero’then had been established as an ambassador to following the Third War. “We could have stayed with the Circle in the marshes. There was a great deal to learn there, and I think you all would have benefited from studying that region.”

When he had not spoken for a while, she asked, timidly, “Why _didn’t_ we?”

“As you know, I have a reputation among the elders back in Teldrassil.” She nodded, realizing she was nodding to herself. “Some among them would have been happy just to see me go, even without students. But with the loss of Nordrassil, the Moonglade became a bit frenzied about teaching our youth with our older generations, before the elders pass away. What we once had centuries to do, now we must do in years. When they saw how I worked with Bern and the humans, I think they came to grudgingly realize that my teaching methods were best suited to this new press of time. So they gave me you. Students to teach.

“It is important that you understand that in the past few years, I have learned to become a student myself. The humans taught me much about the world and myself that I had long forgotten. Though I have only recently remembered the pain of loss, I fear I have also been callous to it.

“When I learned of the Highborne, I knew the danger they posed not only to this world, but our world as well. It always has been, and I fear it always will be. Illidan’s armies are Azshara’s pride re-personified. Azeroth must know what is happening here before it is too late. It was only a hunch when I left, otherwise I would have included Bern. Perhaps.” He smiled. “Old habits.

“I believe it is my responsibility to not only teach you how to be a druid, but also to teach you how to be a kaldorei and, more, a child of Azeroth. Our people have so long hidden ourselves from the world because we feared the Highborne’s folly. But I cannot teach you, and you cannot learn, hidden in the woods sheltered by Teldrassil. The dark world we long forsook has found us again. I will not ignore it. I will not be crippled by the fear of loss.”

Sel’uen thought of Brim and his poor cooking. She hadn’t meant her question to be accusatory… had she?

No. No, she had. She looked again to her Shan’do still as a stone, his eyes shut.

She blamed Ero’then for Brim’s death as unnecessary, and Ero’then knew it. He knew it better than she did. She thought of how he had barely acknowledged Brim’s death until the funeral, and she grew angry.

 _I will not be crippled by the fear of loss_.

“You _are_ callous,” she said. “You never wanted us to come. You really don’t care what happens to us.”

Ero’then was silent for a time. “That is yours to decide, young one,” he said, quietly. “But if I could request this; hold your judgement still. Our task, and your lesson, is not yet finished.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat as best she could, narrowly avoiding an outburst. She waited for him to speak again, but then realized he wouldn’t.

“What are you _doing_?” she finally asked.

Another smile. Thunder boomed over the facility. “A provocation of sorts. If it’s safety you crave, then I suggest you go back to your cell. But I think that if you stay, you will hear an answer to many of your questions. It will be a few hours yet.”

She knew what his words had been designed to do, but she couldn’t help herself. “It’s not my own safety I crave, Shan’do,” she said, and knew it sounded acidic. “I’ll not abandon you.”

The smile stayed, but he didn’t answer. Sel’uen watched him to see if he would say anything else, but after a while she gave up and found herself a spot on the wall and rested. Looking at him, she wondered if she could have had her old teacher - the one who had ridiculed her answers and treated her like a foolish child - would she have taken him back? The way he had spoken to her made her feel scared and alone. How would the others have responded to his words? What would Renarion have said?

But her Shan’do did not comfort her and he did not take any of his words back. He did not speak at all for a long time.

 


	18. Chapter 18

She dozed a bit, but when Ero’then finally unfolded his legs and stood up, she was wide awake. He glanced at her. He was wearing a rare, roguish smile.

“It is time,” he said. “Do not speak and do not react. Above all, do not fight back.”

“Yes Shan’do,” she said. As she stood, her hands shook.

_Don’t fight back?_

Slowly, the guard outside their cell came awake. His armor clattered as he tried to - in a daze - pull himself together. He blinked and looked around, then settled on Ero’then. The Shan’do made no reaction.

The blood elf was white as sheet. He tore out of the hallway.

Above her, she heard the sound of many feet and boots. It sounded like the room was filling, and filling up fast. Agitated voices echoed their way down into the cells. Then one voice reached them that was filled with the kind of rage that will gladly kill. More voices echoed him, some less intense, most more so. People ran to and fro.

“Shan’do…” Sel’uen whispered. Ero’then gave her a harsh look and she fell silent.

The mob stormed down the stairwell like a flood. They were led by the archmage and the guard. Karielle was a step behind them. All of their faces were as hard as the adamantium bars that caged them. They were murmuring and yelling.

“Gethim _out_ ,” the archmage said, his voice cold enough to stick to.

The guard fumbled with his keys and got them in the lock. The door swung open. Ero’then didn’t budge until the archmage grabbed his arm and yanked him towards the exit. Sel’uen cringed away, but Karielle saw her and grinned a wicked barbed grin. The blood elf snatched her too.

Her grip was strong as iron now, and her skin fiercely warm to the touch.

Other blood elves got their hands on the Shan’do. The archmage started shouting in Thalassian.

“What are you doing with us?” Sel’uen whispered. She couldn’t help herself.

Karielle laughed at her. By the sound of it, Sel’uen thought she had gone completely mad. “His slut wants to know what’ll happen?” She squeezed her arm and pulled her close, hissing venom in her ear. “What’ll happen? What _won’t_ happen little bitch?”

Ero’then’s voice now: “Good morning everyone!” He had to shout to be heard over the din. “Pleasant dreams I trust?”

He was almost lynched then and there. Sel’uen was almost glad she couldn’t understand what Karielle and the others were yelling and crying out for. The hellish noise had gotten to her by the time the archmage’s booming voice finally got a hold of the crowd. They were ordered upstairs. Sel’uen was dragged with her Shan’do up the staircase. The rumbling of the storm followed them.

The chamber above the cells was vaguely circular and bare except for a few crates and miscellaneous debris. Ero’then was shoved to the center and surrounded. Karielle’s vice-like grip held Sel’uen in place with the crowd, near the center. The archmage advanced on the Shan’do, arcane light dancing across his fingers.

Ero’then fell to the floor, and his limbs spread themselves. Manacles of burning red energy encased his wrists and ankles. His body formed a star, and the archmage stalked around him.

“I am not cruel by nature,” the archmage murmured. “I had planned to deal with you civilly. You are our cousins, after all.”

The crowd hooted, forming a circle about the two. They were still calling out. Sel’uen was horrified. It was a spectacle; like some sort of barbaric entertainment, something a race like the orcs or the trolls would participate in. Not Highborne.

Probably acting against wisdom, and feeling like she already knew the answer, at least in part, Sel’uen stammered out, “What did he do?”

Karielle’s eyes were wide and bright. It was like she was incapable of drawing them closed. The night elf felt like her forearm was going to pop out of its sockets in her grip.

“We had _dreams_ ,” she said. “He sent us nightmares and locked us all in them. He sent us back. I couldn’t wake up. I told him my story and he locked me in it. It went on and on and on. He sent us back to Quel’thalas.” She looked on Ero’then. “ _Gods_. Let me have a chance with him. I’ll… _I’ll_ …” She seemed unable to be unable to express herself. She yanked Sel’uen and dragged her to the center of the ring. When she was brought out, the blood elves roared again.

Karielle’s grin dancing in her eyes Sel’uen fell on her back, and stayed there. Her ears rang, and she tried to look around her. In the crowd, she thought she saw Aethellion yelling something at her. His gaze was beyond cruel. She also noticed the face of the Ambassador, probably the calmest of the group, though he also had an anticipatory smirk spread across his immaculate features.

There had to have been over forty blood elves, and more were coming in as time went by. Cutting through her terror, she realized Ero’then was talking.

“Karielle Sunstrike!” he shouted. “Did you like the details I added? Will you let the archmage have the first bite of me?”

Sel’uen stared at her Shan’do, eyes wide in horror.

Had _he_ gone mad as well?

The blood elves seemed to quiet. Not much, but enough for singular people to be heard. They had heard the gauntlet hit the floor. They wanted to hear.

“Oh, old one,” Karielle said, nipping up the bait. She stepped in front of the archmage, ignoring him completely. She began pacing. “I have not known you long, but I feel like I’ve wanted this all my life. I _must_ consider my options.”

“While you consider,” Ero’then said, “you should also consider some other things. Some things greater than this one revenge.”

“Oh? And what distraction would that be, old one?” Karielle mocked him. Tension quieted the air as the blood elves waited to see how Karielle would make her first cut. No one seemed to be paying attention to Sel’uen, which was more than excellent in her eyes. She should have gone back to her cell while she had had the chance.

Damn her for her pride.

“Consider your master,” Ero’then said. “Consider you allegiances. Honestly, I am surprised and disappointed at you. I would not have thought you a girl to subject herself to slavery.”

Karielle’s smirk bloomed. “Let’s try this first,” she said. She knelt beside his leg and touched his toe. Sel’uen craned to see. Her fingers were on fire, the same fire that had lit the mound of demon corpses. Her Shan’do foot caught like dry wood.

“No.” Ero’then shouted now. “I am surprised indeed. The dream may have been cruelty to the others, but to you, it was a reminder.” He gritted his teeth, and Sel’uen wondered how he could take the pain—if he was using some sort of power to protect himself. As the moments slipped by, it didn’t seem likely. “Your parents would be proud!” Ero’then snarled. “ _Karielle Sunstrike, the Legion’s whore!_ ”

Karielle scrunched her hand till the fire on Ero’then’s foot (it had reached his knee) tuned white. Veins stood out on his neck and hers. The blood elves around cheered and applauded.

“Do I look like the whore here, old one?”

But Sel’uen saw it. For just a second, the mage’s cocky, cruel grin had slipped.

Ero’then must have too. “Tell me, mage of the Kirin Tor,” he cried. In his voice, the pain was mixing unrecognizably with his need to be heard. “How do you figure this forge and battery remains hidden, so close to the Nether? How does it function without the consent of demons?”

Her Shan’do had always been so calm, no matter the situation. The extremeness of his situation made him almost unrecognizable to Sel’uen. His voice had risen to a scream, but it wasn’t all agony. He wouldn’t have been able to speak if that were the case. There was a strong will keeping him speaking, though he had to scream to do it.

“There is no Promised Land!” Ero’then roared at Karielle and anyone who could hear him. “You’ve doubted it all along. All of you!” He waved his head around like a madman. His hair flapped on the floor. “Your prince has _betrayed_ you! Look at him, mage of the Korin Tor! I know you’ve sensed it, but are you’re too cowardly to look closer? _Look_ at him! What do you see? _Answer me, Karielle Sunstrike, you rutting BITCH!_ ” His voice crescendoed in a scream of purified agony.

Then the fire vanished and Ero’then, whose body had arced there in the end, collapsed. Sel’uen whirled to look at Karielle.

She was still staring at Ero’then. There were no words for the hatred she saw in the sin’dorei’s eyes.

“My turn,” the archmage growled behind her. He pushed forward. Karielle stopped him with a hand. She didn’t move. Sel’uen couldn’t read her like she could the others.

The chamber tumbled into a deathly silenced.

“In a moment,” Karielle said. “First, I want an answer to my question.” She turned her burning gaze on the archmage.

Ostrasan glared at her. Sel’uen got the feeling that this was the continuance of an argument that had been started elsewhere. “This is hardly the place, _young one_ ,” he said.

Karielle grimaced but spoke on. “I cannot think of a better one,” she said. “I am not alone in my curiosity, I think.”

Sel’uen looked around the room, and saw a wide variety of reactions playing off the blood elves present. Curiosity was, in fact, there. Then Drex’s words popped into her head.

_Pilgrims come by all the time. Never want me to go with ‘em, though. They just want me to point ‘em where the others have gone._

She realized that there were pilgrims in the crowd. A lot of them. How many had ended up here, and been put to work? How many had been told that paradise was near?

“Speak, Oltharin,” Karielle said. There was violence hidden just beneath her words.

The archmage regarded her with exasperated anger. “We are building _paradise_ here,” he said. “Manaforge B’uuru is just one among many of the Sun King’s manaforges. We are collecting enough energy to feed our people for generations. Our salvation is here and it is at hand, young one. Now step aside—”

“Salvation?” Ero’then piped up. “By who’s—”

But Karielle raised a hand at him without turning. Ero’then fell back and let out a single long scream.

“The kaldorei is stupid, but here he is right,” Karielle said. “What sort of spell could hide us from the Legion out here? Not even the prince could do that.”

“ _The Sun King_ ,” the archmage emphasized, “has taken steps to ensure our safety and our future, young one. You may have questions, but you have no respect. You ought to mind your place.”

Karielle turned her head. Sel’uen looked to see. She was staring at the Ambassador, who looked bemused at the dramatic proceedings.

When she spoke next, Karielle sounded very tired, almost conversational. “Do not make me look,” she said.

The archmage didn’t. “Our king has secured our future, young one,” he said. One or two in the crowd gasped. “He—”

But he was interrupted. A cool, silken, ebony voice rolled out of the mouth that supposedly belonged to a blood elf. The Ambassador gifted Karielle with a grin of his own.

“Your king has chosen _wisely_ ,” it said.

An explosion blinded Sel’uen. She cried out as heat seared her. She screwed her eyes shut, and yanked at her bonds to get away, but she still couldn’t move. She realized that among those shouting, Ero’then was the loudest and he was in Thalassian. Sel’uen recognized Karielle’s name.

The young mage had erupted.

Sel’uen’s bonds suddenly released. She threw herself to her feet and scrambled away on the backs of her knees and elbows. But her vision was returning now, and she hesitated just long enough for the scene to clarify.

The crowd had scattered. The crater of impact was centered around the Ambassador, who was flat on his back, his eyes wide and his chest steaming where a noticeable cavern had been carved. He cocked his head, confused. Karielle was on top of him, the female blood elf burning like a torch. The other blood elves were all about the room. A couple bodies moaned that had been unfortunate enough to be near the Ambassador when Karielle attacked. The archmage had somehow gotten near the Ambassador, and he was scorched a bit for it. He looked absolutely horrified, staring bug-eyed down at Karielle. His mouth was moving, but only intermittent sounds were coming out.

Ero’then had also been freed of his bonds. He had made it halfway to the Ambassador before giving up. He fell to his knees and hacked a cough. He slumped, and put his head to the metallic floor, his fists clenched.

The blood elves around them were murmuring. They stared in shock, awe and horror at the sight. Sel’uen wished she could have understood what they were saying. They didn’t seem outraged by Karielle’s attack. They must not have known either.

The Ambassador gave his body one last look over, like a tailor inspecting a suit, and snickered. It was high-pitched. “Well!” it said. “It has been a treat negotiating with you fools. One day, perhaps, I’ll be able to visit your scattered, broken souls. Until then…” his head fell back with animated drama. The sound of his skull hitting the floor boomed through the chamber.

The archmage fell to the ground. He was covering his face. “What have you done, child?” he whispered.

Karielle whirled on him. Sel’uen realized she sounded more scared than angry. She fell to her knees and grabbed her own shirt.

“ _What have I done?_ ” she screamed at him. “What have _you_ done? _Would you see us damned again?_ ”

The corpse started to change. Karielle scrambled to get away from it. It elongated and thickened as the enchantment vanished. Sel’uen held back a gasp.

A tall, bulky, and well-muscled humanoid creature now lay where the Ambassador had been. Its shape reminded her of a draenei, but…

 _Eredar_. She heard the word exchanged around the room.

The archmage hung his head. Karielle continued screamed at him. When he didn’t respond, she looked wildly, desperately to Ero’then, who had taken a limp seat. He hardly looked better than the archmage. His gaze was vacant.

“How could you do this to us?” she shouted at him, wildly, illogically.

Ero’then glanced at her, like he could barely see her. “I am sorry child,” he said.

The apology seemed to shut her up, though she still shook like a sapling in the storm. Her gaze fell to the floor, like it was the only sane thing in the room, and it was going to tell her that everything was going to turn out all right, just like she had always thought, that her hope and dreams hadn’t been foolish.

A void of sound filled the room as everyone seemed to process, at his or her own level of understanding, what had just happened. The void was filled only by the occasional rattling of the storm, which now sounded suspiciously like mocking laughter.


	19. Chapter 19

Ero’then was the first to stand. He drew few gazes but he spoke anyway. To Sel’uen, he looked like the same Shan’do she had met all the way back in Teldrassil, and it gave her that tricky but filling feeling she had been desperate for. Hope.

“Archmage Oltharin,” he said. His voice was hard. “Get up. We are not dead yet, though we must act quickly. I can’t imagine we have much time.”

Oltharin looked blearily at the kaldorei, as if wondering if he existed. Ero’then went on.

“First, send your people to free my students. Then, gather your forces to your most defensible location. I imagine that is the main structure? Get anything that could serve us as weapons as well. We’ll talk tactics there.”

He looked around him and said it again in Thalassian. A small number of heads nodded. One of the guards jogged down to the cells. That seemed to galvanize others to get to their feet. Ero’then turned again to the archmage. He hadn’t moved.

“You want to give up?” the Shan’do demanded. “Fine! Throw yourself to the storm. It’ll be a mercy compared to what the Legion will do.”

Karielle looked up. “What would you have me do, old one?” she asked. Sel’uen couldn’t tell if she was mocking. She might have been mocking herself.

“Get them moving,” he said, indicating to the blood elves still in shock or murmuring amongst themselves. The archmage chose that moment to stand up, and, without explanation, start barking orders in Thalassian. Blood elves joined his side. Karielle moved to do her job.

When the kaldorei students started joining the bustle in the chamber, their eyes went straight to the demon on the floor. Even Renarion looked frightened. “That’s an eredar,” he said.

“Your ability to classify common demon types impresses me, Thero’shan,” the Shan’do said. “Your ability to avoid stating the obvious does not.” He looked to Sel’uen. “Brief them, and get them to the center structure,” he ordered. “I have preparations to make.” He ran down a hallway.

Sel’uen stared after him.

Not long ago, it would have been her who would have earned that humiliating rebuke and Renarion would have been given the orders. She wondered if this was an improvement.

 

***

 

Soon the complex was buzzing with activity. All manner of weaponry imaginable - and some she hadn’t imagined - was being carted and carried to the core of the complex where the defenses were being set up. They were also carrying strange containers that seemed to hold liquid energy. She tried to explain, as best she could, the events that had transpired.

Everyone looked frightened.

“Wait, so Kael’thas has allied himself with the Legion?” Yeshaila asked.

“But why?” Renarion pressed. “Illidan was supposed to be teaching him how to gather arcane power. Illidan hates the Legion. Did Kael’thas betray him?”

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Kel murmured. “We should be getting as far from here as possible. Why can’t we flee back into the storm?”

“We killed one of the Legion’s ambassadors,” Renarion shot at him. “If they wanted to, they could find us in the storm. We’re better off making a stand here.”

“Making a stand?” Yeshaila demanded. “Against the Legion? Are you mad? We don’t stand a chance.”

Frustrated, Sel’uen had to shout her friends down. “The Shan’do has a plan,” she said, hoping she wasn’t giving them false hope. But what was so wrong with false hope? It’d do them no good to think about the alternative.

She saw that Karielle had come back. The blood elf stomped towards them. “If all you’re doing is playing with yourselves,” she said, “go to the armory. If you’re not helping grab weapons or mana batteries, get out of here.”

“We’ll head over in a moment,” Renarion said. Hearing how she had so royally fucked up seemed to have emboldened him. “Shouldn’t you be there too?”

Karielle turned on him. Far gone was the dried husk that had traveled with them only days before. The blood elf before him was veritably crackling with power.

“Your Shan’do,” she said sweetly, “told me to set traps.” She flicked her fingers at him, and an arcane rune danced in front of Renarion’s face. “You may linger if you like.”

“We’re going,” Sel’uen told her. She glared at Renarion, who seemed to have been cowed. They headed towards the center of the complex.

It was thick with activity. They found Ero’then helping distribute the mana containers. He acknowledged them with a nod. “Help us out here,” he told them. “Do what they tell you.”

Sel’uen felt like she spent the better part of an hour moving boxes and setting up barricades. She felt like a soldier and didn’t like how she couldn’t shake the feeling. Karielle eventually joined them, looking taxed. Ero’then offered her a container of mana, which she drained with little hesitation. Renewed - and grinning wickedly at them - she went back out.

Outside, the storm seemed to be growing in intensity. Sel’uen wondered if it was just her imagination. She finished moving a box with Aethellion and wiped her brow. It was amazing how quickly former animosities were forgotten when the threat of the Legion overshadowed.

As she worked, she felt like she was missing something. She ran over to the Shan’do, who gave her en eyebrow. “Where is the archmage?” she asked.

He ran a quick glance behind her, surveying the crowd. He must have seen what she saw, because his gaze became very dark indeed.

“Come,” he said. He gathered to him several others. He even grabbed the Mechanician, who had become immensely friendly once the trouble had started. Not even he, it seemed, had known about the alliance. Old hatreds, Sel’uen imagined, would be settled later.

If they had a later.

“Where would he be?” he asked the Mechanician.

The blood elf shrugged. “We can try a few places,” he said. “Probably his study first.”

It proved to be his study.

As they were moving towards it, Ero’then broke into a sprint. Sel’uen and everyone else - about a score strong - stormed up the staircases after him. A huge door sat in their way. That was when Sel’uen started to hear the muffled shrieks.

Halfway to the door, Ero’then entered his bear form. The blood elves almost stumbled to see it. He roared and charged the door, breaking it apart like it was made of cotton. They rushed in after him.

The room was a comfortable size complete with a bed, a few desks and a small library. However, furniture was overturned and stuffed into corners to make way for an elaborate design on the floor that had been written in blood and was still wet to the touch. The corpses of blood elves were scattered about the room randomly. A few still sat, chained in magical bonds, waiting their turn with wide, bulging eyes. The archmage leaned over a female now. He had a knife and was—

Sel’uen vomited. She stumbled out of the way, so as not to slow the others down.

When she had gathered herself, she looked up to realize that one end of the room was dominated by an inky portal. Its center swirled with green light. All the spilled blood in the room seemed to run towards it as if bizarre gravity acted upon on it. The archmage was shrieking curses at them. Sel’uen understood few of them. He unleashed powerful spells, some of which seemed to threaten to tear reality itself apart.

She wondered if her Shan’do would have been a match for him without the small army behind him. As it was, Ero’then brawled with the archmage until he was overwhelmed. The druid tore the blood elf’s body asunder, showering pieces of meat and skin and hair across the room. She was almost too shocked to internalize the gore. Almost. She heaved up more of her stomach.

When she looked up again, the fight was over. The surviving blood elves were exclaiming, exchanging disbelieving shouts. She saw some tears. The portal had fizzled and shut. It was gone.

Ero’then wandered away from the blood elves towards the door, again a kaldorei. He looked almost sick himself. So exhausted he looked sick, perhaps.

“What was he doing?” she asked. Her throat was raw.

He spared a glanced for her. He looked below her eyes, and Sel’uen realized she was probably covered with vomit. If she was he made no comment.

“He said he was brokering a deal with the Legion,” he said. “Trying to repair relations. Something like that.”

For one insane moment, Sel’uen thought that they had made a terrible mistake. Then she looked around and saw the dead elves, their corpses white as ghosts, blood still leaking from the slits in their arms and legs.

She turned away and heaved again. This time nothing came up.

 


	20. Chapter 20

The news of the archmage’s fate spread throughout the blood elves. Other than murmurings, there seemed to be no ill will over it. It seemed he had lied to everyone.

The last of the defenses were set. The mages indulged in the mana batteries to their heart’s content. Guards were set and small-time tactics were discussed. Sel’uen had counted a few more than a hundred heads in the structure. The blood elves filled the defenses.

She had taken a seat away from everyone else. She thought about meditating, but had decided against it. What would have been the point? She just wanted to be alone.

Of course, she couldn’t even have that. Karielle found her and took a seat next to her. The two elves watched the lethargic activity below them.

“You hear about the archmage?” Sel’uen asked her.

Karielle just nodded. She didn’t let on much. It seemed she never did.

“Did you do your hair?” Sel’uen blurted.

Karielle’s orange locks seemed pristine. The kaldorei had only realized it after a few moments of looking at her. It was a braided design. It made her look like a princess. “Did you do it yourself?” she clarified.

Karielle grinned wickedly at her. It seemed to Sel’uen that the blood elf didn’t have a happy expression—only an evil, cruel-looking grin. Whenever Sel’uen saw it, it made her want to wash herself.

“Yes, I did,” the blood elf teased. She raised a couple fingers, and a spark shot back and forth between them. Her hair rose, brushed by a breeze. It made it look even better. “Perks of the profession,” she said.

Sel’uen found herself smiling. “Must be nice.”

“Oh, it is.” Her eyes sparkled, rimmed with emerald. “ _Imagine_ the possibilities,” she said, and winked at the druid.

“Trying not to.”

“Suit yourself.” Karielle pulled her legs up to her. Sel’uen was struck then by how much like a little girl she looked then. She could have passed as the daughter of a middle-aged human without the ears. And the eyes.

It seemed like all the blood elves looked like that. She thought of Aethellion. Had the Sunwell shaped them like that? To perfection? And yet, Karielle looked so fragile, despite the power she knew coursed like blood just beneath her skin. Sel’uen wondered how old she was. Her bruises were gone too. She wondered if mages actually could heal flesh or if it was just aesthetic.

Karielle spoke quietly. “So this is the calm before the storm?”

Sel’uen laid her head on the wall. “What calm?” she said, a bit bitter. “The storm’s never been louder.”

Karielle chuckled, and Sel’uen wondered if she had been wrong about the cruelty natural to her. “No, Sel’uen. The storm of the Legion. That great shadow that will one day devour us all. For us, that day has come.”

“Better to face it than join it.”

“Is it?” Sel’uen glanced at her. She’d meant it as an assuage to the blood elf’s conscience. But Karielle was gazing outside, to the never-ending sea of violet. “I suppose so. Yes, I think you’re right. Still… I could’ve been smarter about it.”

“Maybe.”

Another chuckle. “It’s funny,” the blood elf said. “Back during your Shan’do’s time, my people were betrayed by Azshara and her madness. We learned from our mistakes. But then, not long after, your people betrayed us as well, exiling us across that unknown sea. We thought there was nothing for us. We thought you’d sent us out to die in the ocean so that your own consciences would be clean.

“Now we’ve been betrayed again, now by our own prince.” She shook her head. “And here I am, stuck fighting next to one who originally betrayed my people. How the cycle turns and turns.”

“Your prince betrayed you, but not your people.” Sel’uen indicated below them. “Your prince wasn’t wrong to name you what he did. You are sin’dorei. You’re united in that, at least.”

“Until we are driven to starvation again. What hope is there for us without this?” Karielle gestured around her. “We’ll die here at the hands of those who sought to enslave us, or we’ll die out there, starved. What other choice have we but that?”

Sel’uen leaned over, nudged her. “It’s not over yet,” she said. “All storms have to come to an end.”

Karielle remained looking outside. “Do they, kaldorei?” she asked. “I don’t think they must.”

The two fell into what Sel’uen felt was a strangely comfortable silence. They listened and watched the intensifying storm.

Karielle started humming to herself. Sel’uen recognized it as Brim’s dirge.


	21. Chapter 21

Renarion came by to gather Sel’uen. He did a remarkable job of both ignoring Karielle’s existence and giving her a dirty look. “The Shan’do wants us,” he told Sel’uen.

Karielle gave her a smirk but didn’t say anything. Sel’uen got up and followed Renarion.

The center structure was laid out in three or four tiers. The bottom tier was where their little army had set up camp with rows on rows of barricades and ammunitions. They faced the main entrance that was bolted by doors. Their back was to a huge stairwell that ran up to the back of the structure then split in opposite directions to spiral to the second level of offices and laboratories. The archmage’s sanctum had been on the second level. It was there that some of the mages had taken up their positions for an eagle-eyed view of the battlefield; that had been where Sel’uen and Karielle had sat. Another staircase led the way to the third level, which was very close to the ceiling and otherwise unremarkable except for the fact that it led to the fourth level: the roof.

Ero’then waited for them on the third level along with Yeshaila, Kel and Xallon. There were no blood elves. Renarion and Sel’uen to joined them.

The Shan’do seemed to take a moment to gather his thoughts.

“Some of you may be angry with me,” he said. “And your indignity may be justified. You may blame the mage for bringing this upon us and, again, you might be justified. However, we cannot change what has transpired. We are where we are.

“We cannot flee. The Legion knows we’re here, and it will find us. I’d rather make a stand here than in the storm. The question is, how badly does the Legion want us? What will they expend to gain us?”

He turned his palms upward. Sel’uen realized he was asking them. She swallowed a lump of anger. Here they were at death’s door and their Shan’do was still giving them lessons.

Yeshaila spoke up. “I don’t know much about arcane magic,” she said, “but it seems this place isn’t a small amount of power, is it Shan’do?”

“No Yeshaila. It is not.”

“Then it would make sense that the Legion would want it badly?”

“Not mentioning how we killed their ambassador,” Renarion remarked. “We spat in their faces. They cannot let that stand.”

“True.” The Shan’do nodded. “All true. I suppose that what I’m asking you to consider - and I understand that you are not all experts in demonology, thank Elune… is whether or not we are a price too high for the Legion to pay? We know the Legion is vast enough to - even on such short notice - send an army that would easily overwhelm us many times over. But the Legion fights many battles across many lands and worlds. How badly do they want this one manaforge? This one group of traitors?”

Sel’uen understood. “We have to make it so costly that they give up,” she said.

Renarion snorted. “There is no price too high for the Legion to pay,” he told her. “They’ll keep coming and coming until we’re overwhelmed, just as you said, Shan’do. What could we possibly do to them that would make them give up?”

“I am asking you,” said Ero’then.

Sel’uen gave the question a passing study, then gave up. She was starting to understand Karielle’s disposition. What hope did they have against the Legion? What meaningful blow could they actually strike? The Burning Legion was like the storm - endless.

This was hardly orthodox druidic training. Back in Teldrassil, Sel’uen never would have expected she would be asked to consider how to thwart a demonic attack. Surely this fell on the Shan’do’s shoulders, not theirs. It seemed the others shared her gloom. No one responded to the Shan’do’s query.

When he finally spoke, the Shan’do looked tired. The silver light had gone out of his eyes, dulled now. He looked like he had just made a heavy decision, deep in his heart.

“You are right, my students,” he said. “If we slew ten thousand demons, then perhaps the Legion would reconsider us. Or perhaps they would just send ten thousand more. We will be lucky to take a tenth of that, even with the mages drawing on their mana. I spoke to Karielle, and she said that this whole facility holds huge reserves of arcane power, but it is not easily accessible. Only the archmage had the knowledge to tap into that power.” Sel’uen blinked, thought she had caught a note of derision in her Shan’do’s voice. Something else… but what was it? He was still speaking, but Sel’uen interrupted him.

“Shan’do,” she said. “You have a plan, don’t you?”

Ero’then looked at her.

No, he was not tired, like she’d first thought he was. He was not angry, nor was he bitter. He did not even look like he despaired.

All she saw in those silver eyes was sadness.

“The Legion will try to flank us,” he said. “They will try to take the roof. Using the storm, I will hold it. The rest of you should make yourselves useful to Karielle and the blood elves. She and the Mechanician will be commanding the battle. I will remain up here.”

“But you have a plan, don’t you?”

“Young one, please do as I have asked.”

“Should we expect to die tonight? Or are you holding back hope from us?”

His eyes flared with a little life. “If you think it so, then yes. Tonight, you fight without hope,” he said and it sounded cruel, like something Karielle would say. “Do not look to me for your salvation.”

“Why do you speak to us like this?” Sel’uen cried. “Are you not our Shan’do? Did we not promise to follow you and learn from you?”

“Young one, you speak of following and learning, but you understand neither. I _am_ teaching you.”

“You’re _not!_ You’re either giving up or you’re shutting us out. I cannot tell which, but either way leaves me thinking you are not half the Shan’do we thought you were.”

Ero’then approached Sel’uen. He put his hands on her shoulder, and his touch almost made her jump. He squeezed her shoulders. His voice was both sad and filled with urgency.

“Pay close attention, child,” he said. He sounded almost pleading. “Do not let yourself be blinded, now, at this late hour. Do not consider the sin’dorei or Karielle Sunstrike. Remember where you’ve come from. Remember home and your family. Open your eyes, child. My last lesson to you, and to you all, is at hand. It is not your judgement of me that I fear. It is your judgement of yourselves.”

Sel’uen searched and searched, but there was nothing more than those cryptic words.

With a growl, she shoved him off her. He let her. She opened her mouth to say something, growled instead and stormed off.

Above her, rumbling filled the air. No one called her back. No one followed her.

 

 


	22. Chapter 22

_Deep in the woods, there is a small grove. It is out of the way of most villages, and it is not well-known. Off the beaten path, it was all Ero’then wanted. The trees hid him from the sky and the trees hid him from the world. But it didn’t hide the demon’s screams._

_No, those screams echoed through the woods. They would rise, rise, rise, then fall. Then they would rise again, to new heights, and Ero’then was reminded of a stringed instrument. He was a musician._

_The demon was pinned to the forest floor. Bits of its skin and flesh were scattered around the clearing. There was no hope for its escape. Ero’then had made sure of that. He was making sure that it paid and paid dearly. He counted its payment in volume and pitch._

_“I see you don’t like that in particular,” he said. He felt feverish. It must have been aftereffects of the loss of the Well. He would adapt. He had plans.“Less than you deserve. Far, far, far less.” He would work more, more creatively. He wasn’t aware of his spectator until he turned away from the demon for a moment and saw her._

_The druid’s face was stony. Her arms were crossed, but that didn’t mean anything at all. The druid’s arms had always been crossed.. He imagined that she had been pulled out of her mother with her arms crossed._

_“Ah!” he said. “Anora! Hello.” He had to shout to be heard over the demon. He flicked his wrist and its mouth sealed shut, melded together like its lips were hot candle wax. Its moans came from what was left of its chest. “I was able to grab it before the Well collapsed. Join me?”_

_The druid did not respond._

_“Ah!” he said again. “Of course. I’d forgotten. You’ve slain enough demons for a lifetime, haven’t you? You know, we heard of the Deepwoods, even in the palace. And the name too, mentioned a couple times even by the nobles. Stormborn. Stormborn.” He laughed._

_“Ero’then, send it away.”_

_He blinked at her. “Why?”_

_“Send it away.”_

_Unconsciously, he licked his lips. There was dried demon blood there._

_He chuckled nervously. “I’m just trying to help,” he said._

_“It’s over Ero’then.” Were those tears? Couldn’t be. Why would there? “Send it away. It’s all right.”_

_“All right.” No. “It’s not all right. I didn’t know, Anora.”_

_“Send it away.”_

_“They told us we were helping. We were_ helping _, Anora. Just like I said. We were saving the world. They were all talented like me, and not all of them were Highborne either. The queen said we were stopping them. She was glorious Anora, so glorious. We worked for her. For the empire. To save it. To use the Well to stop them._

 _“But they_ lied _to us, Anora. They lied to us. We weren’t stopping them. They were using us to_ help _them. We were building things to_ help _them.”_

_“Send—”_

_“And while I was working, I heard about you. About how you were fighting. You were a hero, Anora. Everyone knew your name! You rallied the Deepwoods. The great hero Anora Stormborn. And I was there. I was there in the capital and I was saving the world too. But it was_ them _, not us. My work would have destroyed us all._

 _“I worked hard, Anora. I was brilliant. I built wondrous things, things I thought you would have marveled to see one day, when the war was over. I worked so hard. I thought we were saving us, Anora, but it was_ you _who was saving the world and fighting the demons and I… I was…”_

_“Send it away, Ero’then.”_

_He looked from her to the writhing demon. He looked back to her helplessly. He didn’t want to send it away. “But…” He couldn’t even form the excuse. It choked him on its way up._

_“What will they do to me?” he whispered. “What will Malfurion do to us?”_

_Anora was shaking her head. She pointed to the demon._

_Ero’then was pained. He turned to the demon. He looked back to the druid. Her gaze was uncompromising._

_He sent it away. He thought he heard its vile glee as it vanished. He slumped and winced. He turned to face the druid._

_She slammed into him, crushing him in a bone-breaking hug, almost knocking him over. She gripped him, pinning his arms to his sides._

_His head fell back and he wailed, like she had squeezed it out of him. Its rawness filled the woods._

_He wailed. He wailed and he wept._

_They stayed like that for a night. Anora sobbed too, but not like Ero’then did. It was more than a weeping. He came apart in her arms—bits and pieces like dry wood dissolving in water. The sound of him made her sob even more. His heart came out in soul-crushing sobs._

_“Look at me,” she said at last, and he did. His eyes were bloodshot._

_“No one ever needs to know,” she told him. “Join Malfurion. I’ll teach you. You were with me in the Deepwoods. No one needs to know where you came from. You’ve never practiced arcane magic. I’ll swear to it. I’ll have everyone who was with me at the Deepwoods swear to it as well. Whatever happens, you can never use it again. Ever.”_

_Reason seemed to trickle back to him. He shook his head violently. “There were others,” he said. “There could have been Highborne who survived like I did. Who know me. They’ll tell Malfurion, and…”_

_“It’ll be our word against theirs. I’ll teach you to be a druid. Then go to study under Malfurion. The whole world has changed Ero’then. It’ll be the druids and the priestesses who run things now.”_

_Ero’then felt a calm start to pervade him for the first time in years. He turned the idea over in his head like dough._

_It could work. Even if the Highborne he worked with had survived, it would be as she said. Their word against hers. Their word against the word of Anora Stormborn. And if he could become a druid…_

_“But what about you?” he asked. “What are Malfurion’s plans? Will you become a teacher for others as well?”_

_She smiled at him. “No, I don’t think I will. It seems the druids will become male-led. I don’t think there’ll be a place for me. Besides,” she said, as Ero’then started to protest, “I didn’t learn it for others’ benefit. I’ll practice it in my own way. As I always have.”_

_Ero’then nodded and looked at Anora. He thought again about what she’d done, and about what he’d done, and he smiled and said, “All right Shan’do,” and he sobbed again._

_No. He would never practice arcane magic again. It would be difficult, but with her by his side, he could resist it. Druidism would change him. Could he actually become what the Highborne had stolen from him? It seemed it would be a farce, but he could make it his own. He had always liked the woods. Ever since they were little, she had loved the forests. He had learned to love them too._

_But at the moment, he wasn’t thinking about druidism. He pulled Anora closer to him and kissed her under the stars. He felt her lips grin under his._

_“My,” she said. “How many Highborne women did it take to teach you how to kiss like that?”_

_“Told you it’d be worth it,” he said. And he kissed her again, under the trees._

_Under the stars._

 

***

 

When Ero’then woke, he was alone on the roof of the manaforge.

He had wanted to rest and recharge his body as much as he could before it began. Unfortunately, however, his dreams had left him only more restless. The wind was cooling the sweat on his arms. He didn’t feel rested.

He reached out to the storm. He felt its nebulae, its rawness that only a complicated machine like the manaforge could possibly hope to turn into anything useful. He felt the intensity of the storm, twisted by the dark tendrils of the Nether, so close to this world here.

And he felt _them_.

He didn’t have long. The deed would not be simple. He had done every preparation he could remember… or imagine. He wasn’t even sure what exactly he was trying to do. But that, he thought, he would discover. He just had to start. The details would come to him.

So he began. And as he worked, he felt more acutely the power of the Burning Legion drawing nearer and nearer.

 


	23. Chapter 23

Sel’uen too got in a nap. When she awoke she found that nothing had changed. She took a tour of the defenses and resisted the urge to visit either Aethellion or the Shan’do on the roof. Some were catching naps as she had.

It was enough to make her wonder if they had somehow misinterpreted. If the Legion hadn’t come yet, would it come at all? That hope was small and didn’t stand up to even a passing examination. It was possible, though, that the Legion might wait them out. In fact, that might have been the most intelligent route, if she was thinking strategically. The blood elves might have been able to feed off the manaforge’s fruits, but what about food and water? Again she wondered about the ability of magic to sate them. But surely the Legion would benefit from forcing their enemies to wait, twiddle their thumbs and wonder when doom was coming. They might even wait long enough to see if their quarry would consider whether or not they had been forgotten and would try and make a break through the storm or wait for the storm itself to pass.

But Sel’uen doubted that the Legion would let the storm pass. It provided them everything from cover to a psychological edge. The Legion might wait days, maybe even a week, depending on the size and fury of the storm. Drex had said it was a big one, maybe even the biggest he’d ever seen. The Legion had time to let them stew in its eye.

But the Burning Legion is not know for its patience.

The lookouts started calling sightings at around the same time the mages started muttering and sharing strange signs and gestures with one another. At first, the lookouts couldn’t get much more than a vague shape out of the storm. Sel’uen took to the stairs to get to Karielle and her mages.

“What is it?” she asked when she reached them.

They barely glanced at her. Aethellion ignored her but Karielle said, “They’re coming. And there are _lots_ of them.”

“How do you know? How many of them are there?”

Karielle’s signature grin. “We can sense them, kaldorei. Same as you can smell a rotten corpse from a distance. As for how many… Well.” She glanced at the other mages. A couple nodded. “I think there’s enough.”

Over the next hour, lookouts came in and out of their barricades, giving reports. A sort of command had formed on the second level, with Karielle, her mages, the Mechanician, Renarion and Sel’uen, who couldn’t stay away, in attendance. The mages scried details out of the vague reports of the lookouts.

They pieced together that the demons had surrounded the complex just outside the barriers that kept the storm out. Sel’uen asked why the demons weren’t being effected by the storm. Aethellion spoke this time. He chewed her out, saying that not only were demons more resilient than elves, but that they had their own magic-users who were perfectly capable of constructing much the same anti-storm barriers as they were, if not better.

“Well, if their magic-users are protecting them, then we could take them out,” Sel’uen said. “Then their forces would have to deal with the storm.”

“If you want to go out there and hunt them, be my guest,” Aethellion said. “Besides, they’ll just send more magic-users to replace them.”

“By the gods, both of you shut up,” Karielle snapped when Sel’uen started to counter. “It’s a bad idea Sel’uen. We don’t have the resources to go after their mages.”

The demons continued reinforcing every point around the manaforge’s barrier until, from from everyone’s reports, it seemed to Sel’uen that the demons had surrounded them just by numbers alone, never-mind choke-points. When the numbers started to get so high that it was no longer meaningful except to discourage themselves, they started talking about demon types.

Sel’uen was a little unnerved at how familiar the blood elves were with demon-kind. They described the types of demons, their abilities and their weaknesses, with great detail.

Apparently, something called a fel guard was the average soldier-type for a Legion force. Karielle gave her an average height and build of the creature and Sel’uen felt weak in the knees. She imagined two Brims stacked on top of each other, well armed and armored.

 _That_ was an average demon?

A few of the mages stepped aside to scry with more intensity. Apparently, they weren’t the only ones scouting out the opponent. Karielle wanted them to stay hidden as long as possible. When the mages came back, they looked ashen.

“What happened?” Karielle demanded.

“They have a nathrezim.”

The color drained right out of Karielle’s face. “What? Dreadlords don’t command armies.”

“I don’t think it is. I think it might just be here to watch. We were trying to find out what was scrying on us and caught a glimpse of it, before…” The mage made a helpless gesture. “I think it _wanted_ us to see it. Then it shut us out.”

“What’s a nathrezim?” Sel’uen asked. She felt it safe to ask. Renarion and a couple other mages looked baffled as well.

“Puppet masters,” Karielle muttered. “Sorcerers with powers we don’t fully understand.” Sel’uen could tell she was making an effort to not look shaken. She waved it off. “If it’s not going to fight then fuck it. Did you see anything else before it threw you out?”

The mage shrugged. “Some shivarra. Doomguards. Mostly felguards. And something else. Something really big.”

“Big like what?” Karielle demanded.

“I don’t know. Like I said, I think that nathrezim only let us see what it wanted us to see. I think—”

They were interrupted by the sound of panic running through the barricades on the first level. A lookout sprinted up the stairs, spreading the bad news like plague. He was pointing frantically outside. “The barriers!” he cried. “The storm!”

Eyes turned outside. They still didn’t have a physical sighting of demons yet, but the landscape looked different.

Then Sel’uen realized what was happening. The landscape was smaller than it had been before. And it was growing smaller still.

The storm was closing in.

“ _Shit,_ ” Karielle whispered. Without a word to the council, she pulled her mages over and started speaking in rapid-fire Thalassian. They gathered together and started casting.

Sel’uen looked to the Mechanician. “How are they doing that?” she asked.

His eyes were fixed outside. The barrier was fast approaching. “The barrier is static,” he explained. “It’s run on energy gathered by the forge. We have a few mages check on it every few weeks.” He looked grim. “They’re undoing the spell. They’re going to let the storm clobber us.”

Smart. Then she realized it was even smarter than that. The barrier continued advancing until it had swallowed other structures on the grounds. The sound of explosions and howls filled the air.

So much for Karielle’s traps.

Cries of terror and despair filled the air from below. The storm got to their very doorstep, and the sound of its screaming wind tearing at the outside of the building filled the air.

Then, minutely, the storm backed up. A ragged cheer went up. The storm wavered, went back a bit, then retreated a few feet to stop in place, yards from the front door. It had been like watching a tug-of-war. It seemed to be over, but when she looked over at the blood elven magi, Sel’uen saw they were still locked in spellcasting.

Sel’uen shared a look with Renarion and could tell he was thinking the same thing. Even the Mechanician’s grim expression hardened.

The Legion had occupied their magi. They were going to have to fight blind. And they were going to have to do it without arcane magic, of which they had almost bottomless reserves. All of it now useless.

She found herself glaring up the stairs. Where was the Shan’do? Couldn’t he help with the storm? Hadn’t that been what he was doing?

“I’m going up to see him,” she growled, not even really realizing she had said it out loud.

Renarion stood in her way. “We need you here,” he said. “Our powers are that much more important without them,” he indicated to the magi. “You—”

“What is he even _doing_ up there?” she yelled at him. “He said he would control the storm! He’s giving up Renarion! You saw it! If we can’t get him to fight—”

Her voice was drowned by a deafening squeal. She clutched her ears and Renarion did the same. She looked around blearily, then caught sight of the main doors.

They were bending. They were being forced inwards by some irresistible force. The blood elves below started shouting again. The doors were being bent on their hinges.

It was then that it became real to Sel’uen. Even before she saw a single demon, before she saw her first friend die, the reality of where she was and what was about to happen entered her heart.

Doors the size of trees, made of adamantium, bent forward like putty in the hands of some titanic child. The hundreds of horror stories she’d heard about the War of the Ancients, about the atrocities of the Third War, about the monsters she’d discovered as her childhood fled from her and the world ran to greet her with a maniacal, razor-blade handshake; she remembered all the stories and survivor accounts with impossible detail and clarity.

The doors buckled, leaned back like an acrobat and collapsed. A flood of grey iron and metallic red gushed into the antechamber.

“ _Come on!_ ” Renarion roared, and he took off at a run down the stairs. Sel’uen, somehow, followed him, even though her limbs had been flooded with a cold numbness and her stomach had plunged sinking, sinking down to her nether parts.

How could she not join the horror? Death had come to her doorstep. To ignore it would be to invite something far worse.

 

 


	24. Chapter 24

The storm buckled and bent around Ero’then but it did not claim him. He would not let it. Karielle and her mages fought with the demons for control of the barrier. All he had to do was grapple with the storm. It was more easily conquered than demonic spellcraft.

Without the mages, the battle below progressed badly for the defenders. They were scared. They might have been blood elves but they were not all soldiers. They did not understand what it was like to give a life for a tactically important position. The fel guards came in tireless, lumbering waves, breaking apart the first row of barriers, slaughtering the first rank of defenders. The demons fell in droves too, though, as a sea of blood elven arrows held them back as effectively as the blockades. Demon blood mixed with elven.

Ero’then turned his gaze away, chastising himself. Their sacrifices would mean nought if he wasn’t ready.

He too had met the dreadlord, though he had used the efforts of Karielle and her unwitting blood elves to shield his own scrying. It had taken longer for the dreadlord to discover him and send him away. Ero’then did not protest, encouraging it to think him weak. He had been able to find their commander.

At first he thought it was the minor eredar lord, but he saw that _that_ sorcerer was engaged in the battle of wills over the arcane barrier with Karielle and her magi. No, the battle itself was being commanded by a doomguard. He had expected as much. His cursory look convinced him the doomguard was nothing special.

He activated his waiting spell, dropping it like a bomb on the location of the doomguard he had ascertained before the dreadlord had sent him reeling.

The portal shrieked to life and opened up in front of him. The demonic base camp was before him and it was swarming with demons. He saw that they were even starting to build cannons on high ground where they had a good view of the manaforge. Ero’then ignored them, seized the doomguard and yanked him through the portal.

Surprise was all that made it work. The doomguard tumbled, five times his size, onto the roof of the manaforge. He slammed shut the portal and attacked the demon lord with his full fury, ripping it apart.

It roared, scrambled aside and swung a huge, barbed blade that would have made short work of a forest. Ero’then used the storm to throw himself away, out of range, and continued blasting the demon, alternating cold and fire spells. He focused his attention on its throat, digging deep.

As before, the surprise and shock of the attack left the doomguard vulnerable, and Ero’then was able to rip enough of its physical body apart that it fell. Having hardly been able to get to its knees, the doomguard collapsed, roaring out in indignation at its defeat. Hatred filled its black eyes, even in death.

Ero’then fell down panting. He was darkly depleted and he felt physically sick at the sudden and extreme exertion. Still, he forced himself to scry. And this time, when the dreadlord confronted him, itself making a bit of a panicked sweep to find out what had happened to its commander, Ero’then did not back down.

Karielle was right that not many knew how dreadlords operated their magic. But Ero’then had been a student of the natures of demonkind for a long time. Dreadlords were sorcerers, yes, but they were far stronger as psychic manipulators and mind-shapers than users of the arcane. They were master deceivers and plot-makers. While the types of felguards and succubi were well-known by users of the arcane, the existence of the boogeyman-esque dreadlords was a subject of debate on Azeroth. They were rarely seen and never caught. They walked unsuspecting worlds, sowing terror and confusion. They spurned open confrontation in favor of long-cons and schemes that brought civilizations to their knees.

So when the dreadlord discovered Ero’then, and he discovered that he was a kaldorei using magic, and that he had butchered the doomguard in under a minute, the dreadlord did not decide to butt heads, even though it would have found Ero’then greatly weakened and vulnerable. The battle was not the safe little punishment of mortals that it had thought it was.

The dark presence of the dreadlord vanished from the battlefield. Somewhere, the kaldorei felt the eredar lord exclaim its protest. Ero’then fell on his back, wheezing. He felt like he was going to throw up. He let his body recover.

That would get them some attention.

 

 


	25. Chapter 25

Sel’uen stayed in her saber cat form and specialized in counterattacks, whenever the opportunity arose. They didn’t arise often.

All the tactics and plans they had made for their defense - the good ones and the poor ones - had fallen to the wayside. There was really only one frantic tactic being used by the defenders, and that was to have the tougher fighters up front, using the barricades to keep the fel guards from overwhelming them. While they kept the demons bottled up, the crossbows did the real damage. The demons were soon using their own bodies to scale the barriers.

By the Goddess, there were so _many_ of them. They streamed into the chamber like river rapids. They were appearing with different weaponry, mostly heavy-looking shields that protected their wiry grey bodies. It cut down the efficacy of the crossbows.

Sel’uen was running up and down the line, pouncing and tackling and ripping the vulnerable demons that got through the line. The longer the fighting went on, the more holes appeared. The demons’ numbers were endless. The numbers of elves were not.

“Fall back!” Renarion roared. He was fully in his bear form, fighting where the demons were thickest, using his sheer bulk to help keep them back. Sel’uen was amazed at how much of the fighting looked like a shoving contest and how little like the heroics she had imagined.

Yeshaila had fallen pretty early in the fighting. She had still been limping from her leg wound, even in her saber cat form, and had been too slow to avoid a couple chops of a felguard’s longsword. Sel’uen had avenged her, but coldly continued her mission of keeping the holes plugged. Yeshaila was not alive, but in her mind, she was not dead either. It was impossible. How could Yeshaila be dead now, after all this time she’d been alive? Sel’uen had seen Kel just a little while ago. She had not seen Xallon at all.

Renarion had taken command of the forward battle simply by force of personality and the size of his form. The Mechanician commanded their ranged, constantly shifting them around the stairs to better exploit the flow of battle. He wasn’t half-bad at it. Sel’uen could tell by the number of demon corpses with crossbow quarrels sticking in them.

The call to retreat to the next barrier was a sound one. The holes had become too many for Sel’uen to plug. They would start flooding soon.

She scrambled back, cutting across a few demons and knocking them over to buy a few blood elves moments to pull away. One couldn’t get up. She left him, leaping again back towards their next barrier. Renarion retreated slowly, almost backpedaling. The blood elves formed a sort of spear, slowly withdrawing with him as its head. His fur was so covered in demon gore she didn’t know how he could even see.

They lost people. They always did when they switched barricades. A few crossbowmen who had taken positions there had to flee back further with the melee taking their spots. When Sel’uen turned, she saw the demons take a few seconds to slaughter the defenders who either hadn’t heard the order or had been unable to obey. She saw Kel’s head get squished under a fel guard’s boot. His brains ejaculated out of his skull. She thought it bizarre that such a thing could happen to someone who should not have been able to die. Quiet Kel was now quiet forever.

The assault resumed in earnest. The demons slammed into the fresh barricades and found stiff resistance again. Sel’uen fought tooth and claw. She could have been gravely wounded and not even known it the way she felt.

Slowly, she became aware that there were less demons at the wall than she was used to. She actually slowed to a stop, to look up and down the barricade to see if anyone needed help. No one really did. She took a moment to assess the situation and discovered that no more fel guards were flooding inside.

“Get ready to push back!” Renarion shouted. Sel’uen understood his meaning. They could retake ground and rebuild barriers before the next wave came.

And when the last of the demons was killed that was exactly what they did. They shoved crates back into position. They dragged bodies - demon or elven, it didn’t matter - to fill holes. Sel’uen shifted back into her normal shape to help. She thought she saw Xallon’s face once, but then decided she hadn’t.

She saw weary and bloodied eyes stealing glances upwards and her own did the same. The mages hadn’t moved, still locked in their struggle over the magical barriers. Sel’uen felt so frustrated she could have screamed.

She wanted to run upstairs and demand answers from her Shan’do. She would rip them out of him if she had to. They were _dying_ here. His students were _dying_. So convinced was she that he deserved a thrashing that she actually started up the stairs, ready to give him what she thought of him, now, before death took her rage from her.

Thundering hit the gate. It was louder than anything the storm had ever sputtered. Sel’uen paused, feet on the stairs, and looked back at the fallen doors.

It was eclipsed by the storm, but a shape was coalescing. Renarion shouted something that she didn’t hear. The shape got bigger.

Then it got bigger than that.

It proved too large to fit through the doorway. It smashed through instead.

Sel’uen felt like she saw a god walk out of a fairy tale. Only it was not a good god, but a dark god. Its shape was lined with dark azure and a red that dribbled like tar. It had three heads and each head had a mouth that was filled with teeth that rivaled the length of a Sel’uen standing tall. Something like thick wires or tentacles lashed erect on its heads and body, as if searching for something. Multiple eyes filled each head, swimming with orangish jelly that might have been fire. It was standing on more feet than it ought to have had.

It began stomping its way through the barricades, like a dog over an unsuspecting child’s play-set. Its heads dipped, snapping, looking for morsels. It found more than one. One could have been a bear. It was impossible to tell for sure.

Sel’uen stayed on the stairs, staring. Then balls of lightning and fire streaked out and struck the beast.

It roared and backpedaled, like it was surprised at the pain. It spun laboriously and looked up at the mages.

Karielle and the magi hurled more fire and more ice. Golems rose from among the dead and began striking at it from below. A new wave of fel guards flooded into the arena of death.

Sel’uen looked up to see the mages, grim in their work against the creature. There were no expressions on those faces. Just like there was no expression for surrender.

Sel’uen ran up the stairs. She fell more than once. The storm, which had been a dull buzzing all this while, now rose to a fevered pitch all about her. The entire manaforge moaned as the shrieking maelstrom closed in on it. The violet, violent air rushed in through the doorway, slowly filling up the chamber.

And Sel’uen ran up the stairs. She reached the second tier and then the third. She reached the roof and burst out onto it.

She didn’t hear it, but there were footsteps pounding behind her.


	26. Chapter 26

She found her Shan’do gathering strength. Arcane runes ran the length of the roof in all directions, criss-crossing each other like ley lines, though dull. Ero’then was in the center of this pattern, his hair and beard hanging from him, suspended in the air.

Here it was calm. Not ten meters out, the storm screamed all its fury, as if enraged at being so close to the night elf but unable to claim him. It sounded like it wanted him _badly_. A towering demon lay fallen on one edge of the platform. Thick, oily lifeblood ran from its ruined throat. Three huge, crackling spires rose around them, reaching to the abyssal heavens.

She halted, the burning vengeance that had driven her suddenly frozen. She didn’t even blink when Karielle ran past her. She too skidded to a stop. But she wasn’t frozen long.

“Old one!” she cried. “What are you _doing_?”

“Karielle Sunstrike! I fear I might have need of you. Can you see what I have done?”

Karielle’s princess-hair flapped back and forth as she looked around. Read the runes. Read between the lines.

Then: “You’re mad, old one! Not even the archmage could have done this. They’ll see us across the Nether!”

Ero’then nodded. He was calm. He spared Sel’uen a glance but nothing more. “I cannot ask you to join me,” he said.

Karielle didn’t answer. She watched the kaldorei at the center of the spellwork.

Spellwork. Spells. Arcane magic.

“ _Shan’do!_ ” Sel’uen screamed. “ _What is happening?_ ”

Ero’then did not look at her. He forced himself to his feet. His leather jerkin hung from him as loosely as his hair. The air throbbed with energy. He took a deep breath and he bellowed his challenge, words that boomed into the storm with such volume that Sel’uen imagined they could have been heard from Azeroth.

“ _I AM ERO’THEN, MATE OF ANORA STORMBORN. TELL ME, DEMONS, DO YOU REMEMBER THE DEEPWOODS?_ ”

 

***

 

And across the Twisting Nether, demon lords heard him.

Some had been there, and remembered the druidic trap that had cost so many demons and so much humiliation. These demonic lords remembered being crushed by an entire wood awakened by one charismatic druid. The Deepwoods had awakened and it had slaughtered an entire army of the Burning Legion. Those who hadn’t been there remembered it, and sneered and laughed at their brethren who had stood over such a humiliating defeat. If ever Azeroth was conquered, extensive plans had been made on what exactly was to be done with the night elf known as Stormborn.

These demon lords battled each other for the chance at her mate. Eventually, one emerged. Xax’tilac. It had almost been expected. He was the greatest of them that had been there. He had fallen. He had built a palace in expectation of the collection of Stormborn’s soul.

Xax’tilac was soon briefed on the situation at the manaforge, of the killing of the ambassador and the current battle. A minor eredar lord insisted that he had the skirmish in hand, that a Terror was making short work of them.

Xax’tilac knew better. Stormborn had been a female. He could only imagine what her mate was like.

Xax’tilac descended on the manaforge. The storm parted for him.

 

***

 

The gateway opened directly in front of Ero’then. The Nether stretched to infinity within it. A being exited and it stood before the two kaldorei and the sin’dorei.

It was impossible for Sel’uen to describe the being. It was tall, far taller than the doomguard, though perhaps not so big as the creature still tearing apart the elves below them.

It spoke. “I am Xax’tilac, kaldorei. Your arrogance burns brightly in the Nether, Stormborn’s mate, if that is what you truly are. I will find out for myself.”

Sel’uen quailed. The sound of that voice was the sound of the fall of worlds. It was more in her head than it was words spoken. Terror unlike anything she had ever felt overwhelmed her and she was so frozen in place that she lost her balance and fell down. It seemed like it had the same affect on Karielle.

Ero’then, however, remained standing. He didn’t respond. He extended his arms sideways. His hands opened.

The runes around him blazed to life. Azure and violet energy shot into the air with harmonic humming. Lightning arced openly from the three pillars that scraped the sky to Ero’then. His body was now limned with light. Sel’uen realized he was smiling.

“Your arrogance also burns, demon,” Ero’then remarked. He struck.

It is difficult to describe the clashing of forces which’s exercising is blinding. Ero’then didn’t seem to do much more than extend a hand and unleash a wave of illuminated force. The beam widened and then collapsed, forming a thin, whitish line. It was taut.

“ _You fool_ ,” said Xax’tilac. He charged two steps but was unable to take a third. He swatted, almost comically, at the white beam.

Then he retaliated.

The air popped, and Sel’uen felt like the inside of her ears caught fire. She screamed but could not hear herself. She tried to glimpse up and witness the blinding contest.

Knowing it was a trick of the incredible forces being unleashed at that moment, Sel’uen thought Ero’then looked like a Highborne noble. His features had sharpened, his skin had lightened, and the aura of light and runes that surrounded him made him look like a king. He looked like perfection and it reminded her of Karielle. His lips were turned upwards in a dark grimace. Bright blood leaked onto his teeth and down his lip, contrasting sharply with the whiteness. Sel’uen realized that she had been effected by the demon lord’s spell by proximity. Ero’then had taken its brunt.

But though the Shan’do wavered he did not fall. He pushed back and, if possible, the manaforge grew brighter.

There was the blinding white with Ero’then as its focus and there was the depthless shadow that enveloped Xax’tilac.

“ _YOU WILL NOT BREAK ME, KALDOREI!_ ”

And it didn’t look like he would. The light began to fade. Barely at first, but then Sel’uen started to notice it. The runes grew dimmer. The spires’ crackles came fewer and farther between. The manaforge was being drained.

The white beam that connected Ero’then and Xax’tilac wavered. The demon lord’s smile stretched across its whole face. It started growing.

Ero’then gritted his teeth. But even Sel’uen could see that it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t faltering. He was running out of power.

Sel’uen only realized that Karielle had been gone when she returned with crates of mana floating around her. She stumbled onto the roof, and the crates clattering around her, some opening and spilling. She looked up, her princess hair falling ridiculously in her face.

“ _Old one!_ ”

Ero’then dared a glance. He was rewarded with that grin, that torturer-raised-in-a-madhouse smirk. She held out a hand, and her eyes, so long smoldering with green fire, looked like they exploded.

Sel’uen staggered away, too numb to be horrified. A rope of emerald - not unlike the white beam connecting the two contesters - ran itself from Ero’then to Karielle.

The white light enhanced itself and overwhelmed the darkness until Xax’tilac looked like a demon-child in a white room. His alien expression belied his astonishment. He pushed back and the whiteness retreated. But then it came back again.

Sel’uen looked around her. The mana was vanishing in the containers, and those that hadn’t already popped open. They evaporated so rapidly Sel’uen felt like reality was slipping from her fingers.

As Ero’then grew in stature and magnificence, Karielle began to shrink. Her skin wrinkled and her frame grew smaller like her bones were folding in on themselves. Her eyes burned like twin fel suns, the only green in the white room that had swallowed the roof of the manaforge. Karielle was crumpling, the only part of her body not shriveling up like a prune was her hand, which clung the emerald rope.

“ _I WILL FIND YOU ERO’THEN, STORMBORN’S MATE! I WILL FIND YOU AND I WILL RIP YOU APART FOR ETERNITY!_ ”

Ero’then was cool as a spring breeze. He did not respond.

The portal behind Xax’tilac collapsed in on itself. The darkness was devoured by the light. Xax’tilac himself, a child-demon again, buckled, twisted, tried to flee, then broke.

He collapsed into a small puddle.

The end of the light was almost as blinding as its appearance. Ero’then fell five feet and landed in a heap. He did not rise.

The only person who looked like they were alive was Sel’uen. She blinked and began to see the world again.

The storm was gone. From the roof of the now-dull-looking manaforge, she could see for miles. The lumpy landscape. The dark sky - populated by celestial bodies and streaking comets -stretched on forever above her. Below, she watched as an army of demons fled until they reached their portals or simply fled helter-skelter over the violet land. They wanted no part in whatever had just happened.

Shaking from head to toe, Sel’uen crawled over to look at Ero’then. He was breathing and his eyes were open but he was unresponsive. He looked shocked, even surprised. She thought about slapping him and imagined he would explode in a nexus of white light.

She whimpered and backed away from him. From a safe distance, she stared at her Shan’do.

Her Shan’do. A mage. He had broken every sacred law their people had passed in ten thousand years.

How long had he been doing it? How long had he hidden his talents from the elders? From Malfurion himself?

She would have kept to her thoughts, but a sound wakened her out of her reverie. She looked around, waited. It came again, and something worse than dread leaked into her stomach.

It was Karielle.

Her skin had darkened. Her hair had whitened and brittled like it was straw. She was curled up as fetus—as if she was some tiny, wizened elder. She looked like a raisin. She moaned again, and Sel’uen felt her jaw vibrate uncontrollably, like it always did before she would cry.

But she didn’t cry. She couldn’t.

She couldn’t do anything. She could only sit there at the top of the manaforge and shake as Karielle moaned and Ero’then lay still as death.

 

 

 


	27. Epilogue

It was a long walk back to Area 52. The storm was gone, which allowed the dark heavens to be seen clearly. Worlds hung like marbles in the sky, and stars glimmered like pinpricks on an ebony tapestry. But there was no sun. The world bathed in a violet twilight.

Ero’then carried Karielle in his arms. She looked like a child afflicted with some frame-crushing disease. The only sounds of life coming from her were the occasional wheeze or cough. The sound of her coughing made Sel’uen wish she would die.

Ero’then’s druidic healing did her no good. Blood elves needed arcane energy to function. Karielle had completely drained herself to add her power to Ero’then’s struggle. But Ero’then made no attempt to use his arcane magic. So Karielle remained as she was.

When Sel’uen slept she had nightmares.

Thinking neither her Shan’do nor Karielle would survive, Sel’uen had eventually mustered the courage to check the lower levels. The sight was like something out the mind of a mad painter.

Though the manaforge retained its structural integrity, the storm had taken a heavy toll on the building. Debris and the corpses of elves and demons littered the floor and some of the walls. The storm had tossed them indiscriminately. Many bodies were shredded beyond recognition. The walkways on the second level had largely collapsed. She had to watch her footing on the third. She was afraid to call out for survivors; she was afraid she would draw demons. But it hadn’t seemed like there _were_ any more demons. The huge, three-headed god-thing was gone.

The Legion had retreated. She had spent some time just staring at the battlefield. But what the three-headed monster hadn’t finished, the storm had.

There were no survivors.

When she’d returned to the roof she’d found Ero’then sitting and meditating. Karielle hadn’t moved.

They’d started walking back soon after that. They made no effort at clean up or burial. They simply left.

They’d only really spoken once. It had been when Ero’then had picked up Karielle. They were about to leave the manaforge. Sel’uen had asked if it would be safe now.

Ero’then had nodded. “They paid a price they did not expect to pay,” he said. And that was all.

It took them several days to find Area 52. When they did they rested there a day. Ero’then informed the appropriate parties of Drex’s fate. Apparently he had a sister who worked on site as well. Ero’then told her that her brother had died fighting demons. A hero.

The doctor on hand couldn’t figure out what was wrong with Karielle. He suggested they keep feeding her and giving her drink, but he told them his expectations weren’t very high. He said he thought her chances were better if she was able to rest.

They brought her with them through the Blade’s Edge Mountains. When the rocky landscape finally started to soften into the marshes, Sel’uen thought that Karielle’s skin was starting to lighten again, though it could have been a trick of the firelight. A few more days, though, and it became apparent. She was coloring.

Ero’then had to ask around in Telredor to find the location of the Red Sons. They’d last been heard making a stir in Shattrath, where factions in the city were forcing them to take sides.

They left Telredor after a few days of rest. When they entered the forests Karielle was able to walk on her own. The blood elf insisted on it. She also insisted they go on without her if she thought she slowed them down. She did, but they did not.

They found Shattrath with little difficulty. The city was huge and densely populated with refugees. Sel’uen forced herself to talk to some of them. By the time she was finished, it sounded like war was everywhere. It was always bad news.

Ero’then finally found the Red Sons on one of the upper levels of the city. The human paladin was there, Riley, but Bern was out. There was something about fighting the Horde near a place called Auchidoun. Neither Sel’uen nor Karielle were privy to Riley’s other updates.

The Red Sons set them up in a tavern in the lower city. It wasn’t a bad place, even with all the refugees. Sel’uen simultaneously felt crushed by the press of people and glad for the chance to blend in and become nameless. Ero’then had his own room there but he rarely visited. Business with the guild, apparently.

One day Karielle pitched the idea for a walk in the woods outside the city. Sel’uen, feeling rested, agreed. Karielle gathered a backpack full of possessions, while Sel’uen barely brought anything. The difference between a mage and a druid, she thought.

Once out of the city, the silence was deafening. The woods were thick everywhere in this region so a verdant gloom hung on them as they hiked. Karielle set a mean pace. It was as if she had somewhere to be. Sel’uen had longer strides, so she was able to keep up without much effort. She might have wondered at the blood elf’s hurry, but she was too preoccupied with her own thoughts.

She was in a forest for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. She tried to connect to it, and to meditate a bit as she walked, but found her attempts sliding with half-hearted failure. Whenever she closed her eyes, she would see that chamber filled with elves and demons like a blinding afterimage. She did not rest well, and her dreams did not comfort her. When she tried to imagine Dolanaar, and her tree, and the squirrels, and the empire of ants, she found it exceedingly difficult.

So she gave up.

They stopped for lunch. Ever since she’d started walking again Karielle had been putting down more than both night elves combined. Her eyes had long assumed a dullness that hadn’t wavered much in their travels. They wandered the clearing they had chosen. Shafts of silvery light pierced the trees.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to stay in that damned, stinking city much longer,” the blood elf said. Her hair was braided again.

“It doesn’t stink that badly.”

“Not up on the higher levels. But down where we stay it stinks. Stinks like desperation.”

The night elf took a big bite. She chewed.

“I’m considering a change of venues, Sel’uen,” Karielle said. “A big change, to a place where I would be appreciated. A place where I know where my master stands, and where I’ll be welcomed. Some place I’ll thrive. Where I can do what I want. A real home, you know?”

“What about here? What about Silvermoon?”

“They’re not my people anymore. Not really. Maybe in a few years they will be, but right now they’re in for hell. Either they know what our glorious prince is doing, or they don’t know and they’ve got the wool pulled over their eyes. Either way I don’t see much in the future of my people. Not the way we’re going.”

“Then stay here with us.”

That smirk. “Be welcomed into the Alliance? You’ve got an imagination kaldorei. No.” The blood elf watched a breeze move the trees, and the shafts of silvery light danced, reflecting off her pale face. “I want to fight, yes, but I want a home too. Someone who I can serve without shit in my conscience. Someone who won’t sell himself to the Legion. Someone I can stand tall fighting for. A cause and a home I can be proud of.”

Sel’uen didn’t have to guess. “He’s not someone to be proud of.”

“No?” She pointed back towards Shattrath. “And he is?”

Weakly: “He’s never betrayed me.”

The blood elf looked disgusted. “Haven’t you learned anything?”

Sel’uen looked down at her food. She wasn’t hungry. The scene of the battlefield had superimposed itself on the woods. At the center of the carnage, a bear slumped.

Karielle went on. “He’d teach you a lot damned more than Ero’then ever will. Lot more practical, too.”

“You just plan on walking into his realm and joining up?”

“Kael’thas has betrayed him. Wouldn’t that be worth something?”

“He must already know.”

“Maybe.” But Karielle knew she had her on the hook. “Doesn’t matter. I was loyal to Kael when he served Illidan. We won’t be the first to trade masters once the prince’s betrayal becomes known.”

“Do I look like I served Kael’thas Sunstrider?”

“No,” Karielle said. “You look like a beaten bitch. Are you really going to go back to your master Sel’uen?”

It was then that Sel’uen saw that she was no longer a student of Ero’then at all. He had never given her a lesson all the way back. He had never ordered her around like he had before. He had almost treated her as an equal. Like she was his peer.

_My last lesson to you, and to you all, is at hand._

Sel’uen looked at Karielle’s bag. “I assume it’s all packed for the trip?” she asked.

“For two. Should be enough.”

Sel’uen nodded. A strange peace settled on her. It was strange because it had nothing to do with the woods around her or that tree overlooking Dolanaar. She showed the blood elf her empty hands. “I have nothing I need.”

That grin. When they finished their lunch, Karielle actually embraced her. She must not have thought she’d convince the night elf. Sel’uen had surprised herself.

Still, the hug betrayed Karielle’s nerves. Her bravado and surety were not entirely authentic. And as Sel’uen realized that, she felt her own nerves rise.

But what was wrong with that? She walked away from Shattrath City beside the blood elf mage who looked so much like a princess.

Let the fear come. This was a new fear. Something she had not felt before, even when she had been chosen to accompany the Shan’do Ero’then on a journey to a world beyond the Portal. These were new paths.

She found that she couldn’t wait to get out of the woods.

 

***

 

When Ero’then checked the inn the second day, he asked the barkeep if he had seen the two. The answer was the same. He was unable to mask his feelings.

“Hey,” the keep said. He was an orc but with brown skin. He sounded like he was empathizing. “Don’t look so down knife-ears. The world’s full of beautiful women.”

“It is.” He thanked the keep and headed up to their rooms.

Sel’uen hadn’t left much, but then she had had little to leave. It was the same with Karielle’s room. It was so neat Ero’then couldn’t help but smile. The mocking message was clear.

He gathered what little there was from the two females and placed it in his room. He sat on the floor and started meditating.

He could have caught them if he had wanted. He was a damned fast falcon. He even had an idea of where they were going. Or, at least, where Karielle was going. But the fact that they had gone together left him thinking that they had the same destination. Despite himself, he felt regret.

No, that was not it. It was that cousin of regret. He had taught the lesson as best he could. She had received it as she would. If anything, her decision spoke more to who he was than who she was.

He closed his eyes and let himself lull. He was able to sleep well now that he was far from the storm, but he wasn’t tired. Even here, in the press of people and desperate refugees, he could meditate.

He let himself fall into focus. Into the Dream. He returned to that familiar place, that place of peace, but he whispered a farewell to her before he left.

“May the stars guide you, Thero’shan _._ ”

 

***

 

_She had insisted on being outside, so Ero’then tried to make it as comfortable as possible for her. He carried her away from their home and away from their clearing deep into the woods._

_After what seemed like hours, she finally said, “Here,” and he stopped. He laid her where she indicated. She didn’t groan or moan when he put her down, but she did sigh. He propped her head with some fallen wood and rolled up leaves._

_“Stop it,” Anora said. “You’re fussing.”_

_“Stop it,” he said. “You’re dying.”_

_She snorted, but let him fuss. When he was satisfied, he sat down beside her. He took one of her hands. He glanced up._

_This was an even better clearing than theirs. The shape of the trees’ growth and the rocky ground along them had ensured a clear view of the sky. They were far from anything resembling civilization, even by their standards. The sky shone with stars._

_“Down here,” she said._

_He glanced back down. “How do you find these places?” he asked her._

_“I’ve a talent for finding diamonds in the rough.”_

_He glanced up at the sky again._

_“Which of us is more beautiful?” she asked._

_“The stars,” he said._

_She nodded. It was a slow movement and painful to watch. “You are right, Thero’shan,” she said._

_It took him a while to be aware of the quiet. The sounds of the forest were, though there, muted, frozen in time. The breeze kissed Ero’then playfully. The stars shone above, their shine almost translating to an indecipherable sound. Anora’s breath had stilled._

_Ero’then crossed his legs and closed his eyes._


End file.
